With President Bush’s popularity ratings plummeting and Republican leaders in Washington, DC, awash in scandal, corruption and war, Congress is now poised for historic party power shifts come the fall midterm elections.

With 33 seats open in the US Senate and 435 House of Representatives elections slated for Nov. 7, Democrats are hoping to make Bush more of a lame duck in his last two years in office than anything Vice President Dick Cheney might bring home for dinner.

In Pasadena, the 29th Congressional District has been represented by Democrat Adam Schiff, who replaced Republican former Judge Jim Rogan in 2000 and has held onto his seat for two terms.

A former federal prosecutor, Schiff, like all other members of Congress, faces re-election, first in the June 6 primary if another Democrat decides to run. So far, Bob McCloskey of Monterey Park is the only Democrat running in a field of candidates that includes Republican Bill Bodell of Glendale and Bill Paparian, a former Pasadena City Council member who was registered Independent, but is running as a Green Party candidate.

During his time in office, Schiff has been tough on issues related to law and order, as well as the war on terrorism, co-authoring portions of the PATRIOT Act and siding with keeping American troops in Iraq until that country stabilizes politically, a proposition bitterly opposed by a growing faction of his own party.

Nevertheless, Schiff has remained one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics, especially on domestic issues, and particularly on its handling of the war and its decision to conduct domestic spying on citizens without first acquiring warrants or court approval.

The Weekly sat down with Schiff in his Washington, DC, office recently to discuss such issues as congressional scandals, domestic spying, the country’s ever-widening political divisions and what it’s going to take to bring our troops home from Iraq.

Schiff also touched on the possibilities of impeaching Bush, a process which, ironically, his predecessor, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, led against President Clinton in 1998. Today, Schiff is a member of that powerful committee.

Pasadena Weekly: How has the culture of Washington changed because of recent scandals?

Adam Schiff: It’s probably too early to tell. There will definitely be reform packages introduced and parts of them will become law. The bigger question is whether there will be anything significant done to change the political environment and campaign finance reform. A lot of the proposals are pretty skin deep at this point.

Do you think the two-party system effectively checks itself, or do you think it would be more effective to introduce more parties to the game?

The problem isn’t with the two-party system so much as that when you have one-party rule every branch of government for too long it tends to become arrogant and corrupt. The Democratic Party was in the majority for 40 years and in 1994 the country decided they’d grown arrogant and corrupt. The GOP seems to have done that in 10. There’ll be a chance in November to change the majority, which is obviously what I’m hoping will take place.

Do you think the president’s excuse for not using the FISA court’s 72-hour loophole is justified?

I have found the administration’s case for avoiding the FISA court to be very unpersuasive, both as a legal matter and as a practical matter. The law is very clear and the congressional intent is very clear about conducting electronic eavesdropping. The authorization to use force against al Qaeda was neither at the time nor after the fact viewed by Congress as authorizing a run around FISA. So his legal arguments are very unpersuasive. His practical arguments are even weaker, and that is the administration’s claim that it was too cumbersome to go through FISA court, that the standard was too high to meet. The FISA court acts very quickly; it approves the vast, overwhelming majority of applications. (Please see a related column on page 9.)

If it’s determined that the president did break the law, would impeachment be considered and would you support that?

The impeachment the country went through with President Clinton was such a disastrous chapter in our national history; we have to be very circumspect about raising the prospect of going through that again. I don’t want to prejudge the outcome of what I hope will be a very thorough investigation of the NSA program and what the consequence should be, but I can say from having studied the law on the subject that the administration’s legal case is very weak.

What issues have you been working on in your home district?

A number of issues. We have what we call the Kids First initiative, which is a whole package of programs, outreach and legislation designed to try to support education, health care and safety for kids. We were successful this year in getting substantial funding for the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles for pediatric cancer research. I’m very proud of that. They’re doing some phenomenal work at the Core Proteomics Laboratory, which basically, through the use of technology, can now identify the proteins in a tumor in a child and develop a very specific therapy for that child and that tumor that gives it a much greater prospect of success with much less side effects. We hope to get to the point where cancer therapy is individualized, where even two children with the same cancer will have different treatments depending on the protein composition of the tumor. We’re also working on legislation this year to try to better protect the community from sex offenders using GPS technology for people that are on parole or probation. We’re working on the potential expansion of the Santa Monica Mountains recreation area to include parts of the rim of the valley, which go all the way through the Arroyo Seco, the Verdugos, San Gabriel Valley, and others. So we’re working on a panoply of initiatives that have a very strong focus on our kids.

Would you like to see the USA PATRIOT Act extended, revised or made permanent?

I’d like to see the PATRIOT Act extended. There are ways that the PATRIOT Act can be improved to better protect civil liberties and at the same time give the government all the tools it needs to ferret out those who would do us harm. I don’t want it to be repealed or go out of existence, but we can do a better job of striking a balance. Frankly, though, the NSA issue troubles me more than anything in the PATRIOT bill. The administration argued during the discussion about the PATRIOT bill that it did not need to amend FISA, didn’t need to lower the standard of the FISA Act, that it operated just fine as it was. Never disclosing, of course, to the vast majority of members that it was taking a position and by putting it into operation it didn’t need to go through the FISA court at all. That seems to me very troubling. They’re making precisely the opposite argument they made in open hearing. And of course, the whole debate over the PATRIOT Act when you think about it is pretty moot if the administration takes the position that none of this is really binding anyway. I also don’t accept the argument that somehow having a discussion in Congress about FISA undercuts the effort to track down/capture/kill/destroy al Qaeda. Al Qaeda doesn’t care whether the wiretap goes through the FISA court or not, but the American people care. As long as it can be done expeditiously it has no impact on our intelligence gathering. If the argument is being made that al Qaeda is somehow oblivious to the fact that we do electronic eavesdropping, then we’re kidding ourselves if we think they’re that unsophisticated.

When would you like to see the troops come home?

As soon as we see a situation in Iraq that’s stable and won’t disintegrate into civil war, when they have a government that is representative of the people, and that doesn’t become an even worse haven for terrorism. I hope we make enough progress in building up the Iraqi’s security forces where we start to see draw downs of our forces in the near future. This year will be a significant year of transition. I was just in Iraq in December and I have the most tremendous respect for our men and women in uniform. They’re doing everything we’re asking of them. There’s a lot more we could have done to have them better prepared for what they were to encounter, provide them with better equipment, armored vehicles, more body vests. But I’m hopeful that the government that emerges from the elections will include the Sunnis and will lay the foundation for us to be able to draw down our troops.

WASHINGTON, DC – As lawmakers gathered for a joint session of Congress to hear President Bush’s fifth State of the Union address Tuesday, about 500 people led by the activist group World Can’t Wait tried to "drown out Bush’s lies" outside the heavily fortified US Capitol Building.

Facing a nearly $400 billion deficit, a critical election year, growing criticism over his domestic spying program and increasing dissatisfaction with the War on Terror, Bush’s speech was met with not just skepticism but also cynicism by many – and not just protesters – who heard him speak.

At a restaurant less than a quarter-mile from the Capitol, diners were unimpressed.

"We’ve heard this speech five times now," said Nate Johnson, a Washington resident. "It was funny to watch what the Democrats and Republicans applaud for. Even that is politically motivated."

Some felt the issue of Iran was out of place in the speech, in which Bush pleaded for renewed support for the war in Iraq and called on Congress to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act.

"There are nuclear threats all over the world," said artist and self-described revolutionary Hawah, who teaches in DC-area schools. "Why not bring up Syria or North Korea or China? His motive seems ambiguous."

Perhaps that ambiguity explains why the president’s overall ratings now hover around 40 percent – the lowest approval ratings ever for a sitting wartime president.

In cities around the country, including Los Angeles, protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against the administration.

Josh Collins, an English teacher from Glendale, said he brought some of his students to the World Can’t Wait-sponsored protest at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, outside the CNN Building in Hollywood.

"We’re reading Orwell’s ‘1984,’ and I brought some of the students here as opposed to [them] just hearing the doublespeak and Newspeak and all the crap of this regime," said Collins.

In fact, the LA demonstration attracted a generally much younger crowd than previous demonstrations.

"A lot of young people are very much aware of how serious the situation is and don’t believe it’s possible to wait until the Bush term expires because every day there’s a new action contrary to the interests of the people of the United States. Bush is not serving the common good," said longtime anti-war activist Blase Bonpane.

"The more I learn, the more to the left I become. It’s the war, it’s the torture – the policies all over the world. It’s how many innocent people are dying for nothing. We should get out of Iraq right now, and it’s amazing how many people feel the same way," said Anne Goldin, 24, of West Hollywood.

World Can’t Wait organizer Adam Grimes, a 29-year-old TV actor who’s appeared in such shows as "CSI Miami" and "The OC," said, "There’s nothing I believe in more than eliminating these guys from office."

Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild, who hosts a program on KPFK 90.7-FM, said the PATRIOT Act and government eavesdropping have nothing to do with making us safer. "It has to do with making the ruling elite safer from us and what we’re doing tonight," he said.

Mari Riddle of Pasadena turned her 50th birthday party last week at the Avenue 50 Studio art gallery in Highland Park into a fundraiser for World Can’t Wait’s print-ad campaign, which last month placed ads demanding "Bush Step Down" in The New York Times.

"We’re different from most of the other rallies, which chip away at Bush with a single cause of some sort. We’re saying we have to repudiate his entire agenda and force him out with all of it," Riddle said.

Back in Washington, peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested and removed from the House gallery just before Bush’s address. She was wearing a shirt with an anti-war slogan, which she kept covered up until she sat down. After an ineffective warning, she was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, a misdemeanor.

Sheehan, who has considered a run for Democratic US Sen. Diane Feinstein’s seat in California, wants Bush not only impeached but also tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"During Bush’s speech, every time he says ‘terrorist,’ replace it with ‘me and my insane policies’ and it fits right in," she told the Weekly Tuesday in Washington.

Today, the Bush War Crimes Commission, initiated by Not in Our Name, is expected to announce "indictments" against the Bush administration at the National Press Club in Washington. Harry Belafonte and Michael Ratner will deliver the opening remarks.

Carl Kozlowski contributed to this report.

A minority party candidate faces an uphill battle this November in strong opposition majority territory.

No, it’s not a Democrat trying to regain one of the 21 seats needed to overturn power in Republican-controlled Congress. It’s not a Democratic gubernatorial candidate trying to take back one of the four states needed to overturn the Republican majority.

The San Gabriel Valley’s own former Republican state senator, Richard Mountjoy of Monrovia, has announced he will run against US Sen. Diane Feinstein.

The 73-year-old Mountjoy is no stranger to politics or controversy. As former president of the California Republican Assembly, the state’s largest conservative activist group, Mountjoy was the author of Proposition 187, which was approved by 59 percent of voters in 1994 and would have denied government health care, education and welfare benefits to illegal immigrants.

The initiative was later voided by US District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer, who ruled that regulation of immigration is the federal government’s responsibility.

Having spent 10 years in local government and 23 years in the state Legislature, the Monrovia businessman, whose son Dennis has served two terms in the Assembly, was comfortable being back in the private sector. But encouragement from his former colleagues convinced him to give the Senate a shot.

Coming on the heels of the Minute Men protests across Southern California and President Bush’s proposal to give immigrants a temporary work visa, Mountjoy said he plans to once again focus his campaign on the issue of immigration. "I’ve been pushing that one since before it was popular," he told the Weekly.

According to Wikipedia, "It is commonly believed that a repercussion of the campaign for passage of Proposition 187 was the alienation of minority voters in California from the Republican Party."

For his part, Mountjoy does not see anything wrong with his support of these policies, which have been characterized as racist by not only those in the opposition party, but the very people who feel the weight of those actions: Latino immigrants.

"That’s an inflammatory thing. I’m just shocked. Thirty some years in the Legislature … I’ve got a record. Take a look at it," Mountjoy said in a follow-up interview. "I’m not going to respond to inflammatory, outrageous, stupid questions. I don’t do that."

The Golden State hasn’t had Republican senators since Pete Wilson and John Seymour left office in 1992, so the question remains: Is California ready to elect another Republican?

-Justin Chapman

Pasadena Weekly: You said you would drop out of the race if another Republican with deeper pockets chose to run. Do you know if anyone has expressed interest in running against the incumbent?

Richard Mountjoy: Well what I meant by that is, if there was somebody that got in and decided to spend a whole bunch of money on primaries, neither one of us could win, so … that was the reason for that comment, but I’ve already taken out the papers. I’m in the race. I don’t know if anyone’s expressed interest. I have so many grassroots supporters out there, I don’t think anybody is going to get it together and try to beat me in the primary.

What accomplishments during your terms as state Senator are you particularly proud of?

I was the one who got rid of MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether). I was by myself on that issue. After 18 months, we finally got it out of the field, this poison in the water. I was a stand-alone on that one. I’ve done workers’ comp. I was key in workers’ comp reform in the late ’80s.

If elected, what would be your policy on immigration and California’s border with Mexico?

Well, I was the author of Proposition 187, so you know where I’m at on that issue. I’m not a person that just supports an issue; I go out and work for it. Immigration reform is a must, an amnesty. So that’s my position. I’ve been pushing that one since before it was popular. Way back, ’94. Matter of fact, 187 passed and was set aside by Gov. Davis. Illegally set aside, but it was set aside.

When you left the state Legislature in 2000, did you know you wanted to run for another office later on down the line? Were there some things you still wanted to accomplish?

No, actually, I was very comfortable doing the things I like to do. But there were just hundreds of people that sent me emails saying to get in the race. After talking to a lot of my friends in the political arena, they said, "You’re the one guy who can do it." I do have support statewide, so I considered it for awhile, then decided, … Well, why not give it a shot? That’s where we’re at. And the support’s pouring in from the grassroots pretty heavily.

Do you think the governor can make a comeback?

Yeah, I think he will. I don’t think the governor’s in a whole lot of trouble as long as he doesn’t go too far to the left. He’ll be fine, and I think up to now he’s done a pretty decent job. He’s gonna be in the middle. Like I said, you have to sit back and see what he’s going to do in the future, what he does with this year’s budget, how that all comes out. There was a heavy campaign against his propositions and it was just insurmountable. He took on too many dragons at one time. We’ll just have to see how the whole thing plays out.

Sen. Feinstein has been labeled "undefeatable." What do you think it will take to unseat her?

Well, that’s the reason most people believe that I can do it because it’s going to take heavy grassroots support, it’s going to take a lot of Democrat support, and I think I can do that. In my own district I ran like 20 percent ahead on registration almost every time I ran. The Reagan Democrats will come out and support me.

What would be your main priorities if elected?

Immigration reform, of course. Helping the president get his nominations to the Supreme Court through, I think that’s critical. I don’t think we need political activists on the Supreme Court or any other level of court. Support for the president’s program against terrorism. I totally support giving powers to the president to surveil (sic) people. Well, actually it’s through Congress that they do that, but I think the PATRIOT Act needs to be reenacted. I think Mrs. Feinstein and the other Democrats are on the wrong side. I mean, they’re on the side of saying, "Hey, whatever’s bad for America is good for us." That’s the wrong side to be on. I don’t think the American people are that way and I don’t think the Democrats are that way – rank and file Democrats are not there. Rank and file Democrats are very patriotic. They love this country and support the military. Diane Feinstein and her cohorts don’t. It’s as simple as that. And those would be very strong issues with me.