For state Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen's seat: challenger Kelly Mainard, R

For House Position 1: two Democrats – Ray Harper and Chuck Collins against incumbent Republican Rep. Jim McCune

For House Position 2: Incumbent Rep. Tom Campbell, R

Here's our editorial:

Voters in the 2nd Legislative District don’t want for choices this year.

All three incumbents are facing challengers this year. That’s encouraging. The district, which encompasses Southeast Pierce County and parts of Thurston County and includes Spanaway, Orting, Eatonville and Yelm, could benefit from some fresh blood.

It is telling that someone like state Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen, a 22-year Democratic veteran of the Legislature, has attracted two strong Republican opponents.

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In this case, that would be Tacoma City Councilman Rick Talbert, a recent fitness convert who's had a rough spring and summer.

I posted here earlier this year about Talbert and Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney, who are good friends, teaming up to lose weight and get fit. Both took to bike riding and got advice from nutritionists and a trainer. Talbert set a goal of participating in the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon in San Francisco.

Both shed a lot of weight, but Talbert has hit roadblocks (and I don't mean Frisko Freeze.) In May, he tore a hip flexor 11 miles into the Tacoma City Half-Marathon. Then during an early June bike ride with his son, his son stopped suddenly to avoid a turning car, but Talbert, following behind, didn't.

The result: a broken left femur, at the point where the joint meets the hip. Talbert reports:

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These endorsements will appear in Thursday's News Tribune:

It's not surprising for a Republican in a year trending anti-Republican, but U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert faces five challengers this year as he runs for re-election in Eighth Congressional District.

Three are Democrats: James Vaughn of Orting, Darcy Burner of Carnation and Keith Arnold of Auburn. Two are running as nonpartisans: Boleslaw Orlinkski of Bellevue and Richard Todd of Snoqualmie.

Burner commands broad support from the Democratic Party, as well as its nomination. She's the obvious choice for Democrats and other voters leaning Democrat this year. Reichert is the equally obvious choice for Republicans.

The real contest, of course, will come this fall, when Reichert and Burner will again do battle for the seat he now holds.

This editorial will appear in Thursday's News Tribune:

Voters should return the sitting Supreme Court justices and Pierce County Judge Sergio Armijo to the bench.

The state Supreme Court races this year are largely quiet affairs, for better and worse.

Washington certainly doesn't need a repeat of the nasty battles for the bench that marred the 2006 election.

But this year, the campaigns have slipped so far below the radar that voters risk missing what might be their only opportunity to weigh in.

The new top two primary doesn't apply to nonpartisan positions, meaning judicial races will continue to be decided in the primary if any candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote. That will happen in at least one race, and probably both.

There are a few reasons for the sleepy campaigns. The ballot is more crowded this year, and special interest groups that poured money into the 2006 races have turned their attention elsewhere.

Meanwhile, no challenger has mounted a vigorous campaign – which probably has as much to do with the sitting justices themselves as the lack of money for opposition.

Justices Charles Johnson and Mary Fairhurst are smart, capable jurists.

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When news of Chris Gregoire's ID check at a downtown Olympia bar gets around, Hannah's could prove popular with some aging-but-in-denial Boomers.

What middle-aged Peter Pan or Tinker Belle wouldn't love to get carded at the door?

"Do I really look like I might be under 21?"

1. Supreme Court endorsements: Charles Johnson, Mary Fairhurst

2. Superior Court endorsement: Sergio Armijo

3. 8th Congressional District endorsements: Dave Reichert & Darcy Burner (for the primary only)

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

DNA evidence has freed innocent men. Could it also be putting some behind bars?

That's the troubling question raised by so-called "Arizona searches" of state DNA databases, so named for the Arizona crime lab analyst who has discovered startling similarities in the genetic profiles of unrelated felons.

FBI officials argue the research is misleading. When law enforcement goes looking for a DNA match, it constrains its search to a specific profile – thereby eliminating room, or at least much of it, for false matches.

Say the FBI is right. There's still a snag big enough to unravel all but the strongest criminal cases. It's called reasonable doubt, and word that DNA evidence is not infallible could certainly qualify.

Law enforcement should be taking the lead in clearing up questions about the accuracy of DNA matches. Instead, the FBI is encouraging states to stonewall the scientists and legal experts who want to test the accuracy of statistics using some of the nearly 6 million profiles in the national DNA database. That will only backfire.

More important, it is a disservice to the interests of justice. If this nation has learned anything as it has watched the wrongly convicted walk out of prison after wasted years, it should be to constantly challenge what is assumed to be open and shut cases.

Owen, McCraw for lieutenant governor

Washington's lieutenant governor essentially has two duties: fill in for the governor when he or she is incapacitated or out of the state, and preside over the state Senate and its Rules Committee.

Of the five candidates for the position, Democratic incumbent Brad Owen is qualified to fulfill both responsibilities. But Republican attorney Marcia McCraw shows enough intelligence and promise that she rates a co-endorsement in the Aug. 19 primary. The top two vote-getters will move on to the Nov. 3 general election.

Owen, who is seeking his fourth term, was a Senate leader from Shelton during his 14 years representing the 35th Legislative District. He runs a tight ship in presiding over the Senate, requiring that senators conduct themselves with decorum and respect for each other and the institution. When the Legislature is not in session, he leads trade missions, hosts visiting dignitaries and visits schools promoting substance abuse prevention.

McCraw, a business and real estate attorney in Seattle, has worked as a policy analyst for King County Councilwoman Jane Hague on Eastside rail corridor issues. A Mandarin speaker, she would use the office's "bully pulpit" to cultivate more trade with Asia. And as a longtime community activist, she would promote more volunteerism.

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Endorsements we'll shortly be running in print:

Tomorrow: We go for Democrat Brad Owen and Republican Marcia McCraw for lieutenant governor. Also, Brian Sonntag for state auditor, Mike Kreidler for insurance commissioner, Sam Reed for secretary of state.

Thursday: We endorse state Supreme Court Justices Mary Fairhurst and Charles Johnson for re-election.

Also: Sergio Armijo for re-election to the Pierce County Superior Court.

Also: We endorse Dave Reichert as the Republican candidate and Darcy Burner as the Democratic candidate for a November runoff.

It was a deal the Lakewood City Council couldn't refuse. Like thousand-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk, begging to be picked up. Something for nothing.

Money's always tight in city government. So here's the plan: Bring in enterprises – casinos – that promise instant riches but whose only purpose is to separate Lakewood's citizens from their money. Then step in to scoop up a big share of the profits – $2.8 million a year, at last count.

That money comes at a price, but it's beautifully concealed. The little secret is that the casinos' come-on tends to con the desperate, the poor, the less educated (it cons others, too, just not as easily). Some players inevitably lose control and become problem gamblers.

Gambling does to personal finances what meth does to teeth. Gaming addicts typically run up catastrophic debts. They frequently turn to embezzlement or other kinds of theft. They frequently run their families into bankruptcy. They often lose their wives or husbands. A few commit suicide.

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Score one for the public interest. The Spokesman-Review has released a database of 10,000 people who bought fake degrees from a single Spokane-based diploma mill.

The Justice Department, which prosecuted the owner of the mill, had refused to release the names, citing internal policy. We didn't think much of a government policy that would allow phony degree holders to continue to cheat the public and employers, and said so earlier this month.

Somehow, the Spokesman-Review got a hold of the list (it's getting wider distribution these days as investigators forward it to all 50 state attorneys general and various other state agencies).

A preliminary analysis by the paper shows 135 individuals with ties to the military, 39 with links to educational institutions and 17 employed by government agencies. You'll no doubt hear more about this in the coming days as the names get broader review.

1. Primary endorsements for lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state auditor, and insurance commissioner.

2. The City of Tacoma’s goal of to bring city salaries a notch above market might be worth achieving, but it will have to be weighed against the cost once a huge compensation study is completed.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

The following endorsements (for the primary only) will appear in Tuesday's News Tribune:

Ten candidates are running for governor this year and – apologies to the other eight – only two matter.

The race is between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Chris Gregoire, the incumbent governor. Gregoire beat Rossi by a flea's hair in 2004, and the race may well prove tight again this year.

We endorse both of them in the Aug. 19 primary and look forward to a spirited rematch this fall.

The following endorsements for the Aug. 19 primary will appear in Tuesday's News Tribune:

Stiff competition for this down-ballot race revolves around a question: Should the state treasurer help set policy?

For Allan Martin, it's all about treasury management.

Jim McIntire would rather talk fiscal policy.
Meanwhile, ChangMook Sohn has a few things to say about economic forecasting, tax regressivity, financial audits and the timing of bond sales.

Still awake? Well, then, welcome to the hottest ticket on this year's primary election ballot.

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A preview of the endorsements we'll run on our printed pages the next couple days:

Monday: Why we're endorsing Terry Bergeson for superintendent of public instruction.

Tuesday: Why we're endorsing Dino Rossi as the Republican candidate and Chris Gregoire as the Democratic candidate for governor in the August primary.

Also on Tuesday: Why we're endorsing Allan Martin as the Republican candidate and Chang Mook Sohn as the Democratic candidate for state treasurer.

The following editorial will appear in Monday's News Tribune:

The incumbent has made mistakes as the state’s public schools chief, but she’s proven her commitment to higher educational standards.

The race for Washington superintendent of public instruction offers voters a healthy menu of candidates, several with strong resumes.

The two leaders are former lawmaker Randy Dorn and the incumbent superintendent, Terry Bergeson. Dorn is a good choice, but we’re sticking with Bergeson.

First, let’s acknowledge Dorn’s considerable strengths. As a former schoolteacher and principal, he knows his way around a classroom. He served in the state House of Representatives from 1987 to 1994 and wound up chairing the House Education Committee.

Since then, Dorn has worked as a motivational speaker, education consultant and leader of the union that represents school secretaries, teacher assistants, computer technicians, bus drivers and other support staff. He’s a credible candidate, and he has drawn the support of the Washington Education Association and others who’ve become disaffected with Bergeson’s stewardship.

We aren’t disaffected.

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Tradition at The News Tribune and most newspapers has been to treat upcoming election endorsements as state secrets until the day they appear in print. We're breaking from that tradition this year.

We'll give readers of this blog sneak previews of our endorsements – first, a bare announcement of them, then the full editorial explaining our choice the day before it is printed.

So watch this space: Tomorrow, we'll do some announcing. We'll also post our editorial endorsement on the election for superintendent of public instruction (which will run in Monday's News Tribune).

Every election year, we are asked why we do election endorsements in the first place. Some believe we have no business meddling in the democratic process.

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I've never seen the man cut a rug, but I'm going to hazard a guess that John Ladenburg is doing the happy dance of vindication right about now.

Pierce County just released the financials from Chambers Bay golf course's first year of operation. Spokesman Ron Klein sums them up:

"Chambers Bay ended the year in the black and generated more than $690,000 in tax revenue. It also made both $430,000 debt payments on time. And it did it all without using one dime of taxpayer's money."

Approximately 50 percent of the golfers came from out of the area. The county's economic development division is working on an estimate of how much local hotels and retail establishments benefited from the course.

I haven't given the figures much more than a quick look. I'm on deadline with something else, but wanted to get this up as soon as possible.

Here is actuals vs. budget and the breakdown for tax collections.

Ron Klein, Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg's spokesman, took issue today with our editorial about a plan to build a new clubhouse and hotel at Chambers Bay golf course.

He wrote to ask why the editorial said taxpayers are on the hook for the golf course.

... no tax dollars were used to build the course and no tax dollars are being used to operate and maintain it. If the course does not meet expenses there are other avenues we can pursue before we dip into tax dollars, such as KemperSports' portion.

We are constantly telling citizens and reporters that taxpayers aren't responsible for the course. Sewer customers are only responsible to the extent the sewer utility used sewer funds to buy the land and put the money up to borrow against for the course. No taxes are involved.

I replied that while no taxes are going toward operations, the bonds are backed by the sewer and general funds. It might take extraordinary circumstances to get there, but the bottom line is that taxpayers are liable, even if as a last resort.

Klein wrote:

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The New York Times Magazine has a story this week, "The Next Kind of Integration," that hits close to home.

It describes how last year's Supreme Court ruling that struck down racial desegregation in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., schools may come to be viewed "less like a cause for regret and more like an unexpected opportunity."

That's because some districts are using a concurring opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy to chart a new course: integration plans that are "race conscious" but primarily driven by socioeconomics. Research backs the approach, showing that all students tend to fare worse when a school has high concentrations of poor kids.

It's that kind of research that has prompted University Place schools to redraw school boundaries in an unusual way. The district is targeting the most concentrated pockets of poverty by shuffling some students who live in apartment complexes to new schools.

I wrote about the plan last month, calling it the kind of discrimination that might be ultimately fairest to the children affected and asking what the conclusions behind economic desegregation mean for school districts such as Tacoma’s where “equality” would mean a city full of schools with student bodies that are predominantly poor.

Researchers don't yet have the answer. Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation told the magazine writer that more studies are needed to pin down the percentage of middle-class kids that a school needs to have to serve all its students well.

The article does offer at least one option for inner city schools: Persuade more middle-class and white parents to choose public school over private.

Former Lakewood City Councilman John Arbeeny forwarded an e-mail to us from David Anderson, the man behind the petition drive to put an anti-casino measure on the November ballot. It seems that the Pierce County auditor's office is having trouble with many of the 4,939 signatures collected.

If the challenged signatures don't hold up as valid, the initiative won't go on the ballot. So the initiative backers are hurriedly trying to round up more signatures to get them to the 3,707 they need.

Here's the e-mail from David Anderson.

By 12 noon on Friday, August 1, we will need another 1,000 signatures to enable the Initiative to ban casino gambling in Lakewood to make it to the ballot in November. The Pierce County Auditor reviewed the 4,939 signatures we previously submitted and determined there are 2,947 valid signatures. 1,992 signatures were challenged.

We will be meeting with the Auditor on Wednesday, July 23, to determine why over 30 percent of our signatures have been rejected in the hope that we can save some. But this means we must collect over 100 signatures per day beginning July 23.

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Until a couple decades ago, Hell had seven circles. A couple more had to be excavated with the coming of the Internet.

The Ninth Circle – the pit of the pit – is for the malicious hackers who devise viruses, worms, Trojan horses, rootkits, spyware and other malware.

The new Eighth Circle – above the digital saboteurs but below the traitors – is for spammers. Like Robert Soloway, the "king of spam" who was sentenced to four years yesterday in Seattle's federal district court.

How does fraudulent spam betray the human race? Let us count the ways.

It steals time and money on a planetary scale. It jams the world's inboxes day in and day out. It forces Internet service providers to handle billions of unwanted messages daily. It makes us buy software to filter it out, then buy new software then the likes of Soloway figure out how to get around the old software.

Soloway was a particular sweetheart. Not only would he refuse to take people off his lists when requested, he "mail bombed" his opponents.

But Soloway did possess one wonderfully redeeming quality: He was sloppy enough to get caught.

1. Putting public credit behind a new clubhouse and hotel at Chambers Bay Golf Course smacks of doubling down on a mediocre hand. The payoff could be huge, but so is the risk.

2. Rare is the court decision that gives neither side entirely what they want yet satisfies them both. A state Court of Appeals' ruling Tuesday is one such rarity. A three-judge panel struck a blow for criminal accountability by ruling that the state cannot retry Charles Ray Walters.

3. You'd think some phenomena of nature would be exempt from mundane property laws. But rain isn't one of them.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Cheryl Tucker, researching today's editorial on recess, happened upon a think tank's discovery that playground time is an educational horror story.

Used right, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation concluded, recess could teach kids how to play well with others and entice chubby introverts into sweaty fun. This, however, requires adult supervision.

The status quo isn't working too well. Here's what one principal said to the researchers: "Recess is when all the trouble starts: the teasing, the fights, the bullying, the injuries, and referrals."

Another principal: "I know it's lunch recess when the office is full and the nurse is cringing."

Let me add some whining of my own:

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Courts reporter Adam Lynn writes that appellate judges have issued a decision in the Charles Ray Walters case.

Walters is the bad-boy-made-good who ran down Michael James Coon in a Tacoma hospital parking lot in 1988 and has lately been maneuvering to use a state Supreme Court decision voiding the state's felony murder law to wipe his record clean.

From our May editorial:

(Walters) wants the Court of Appeals to preserve the order vacating his conviction and throw out only the reinstatement of charges. He wants absolution for a crime that he readily admits he committed.

That is asking too much. Justice requires an official reckoning. Without a conviction on the books, there is none.

The Court of Appeals decision should make neither side of the controversy happy. The prosecution can't secure its conviction of Walters by forcing him back into court, but neither can Walters get off scot-free.

Sounds like perfect justice for an imperfect case.

I'd gotten far down the path of life before running into the question: Who owns the rain?

You'd think some phenomena of nature would be exempt from mundane property laws. But rain isn't one of them.

As it turns out, the State of Washington holds title to the April showers. That's what the creators of 21 Acres – an experimental farm in Woodinville – found out when they decided to irrigate dozens of garden plots with rainwater rather than paying for city water.

Without a permit from the Department of Ecology, that's illegal. So, technically, is using a barrel beneath a downspout to collect water from the gutter.

This is disillusioning. There's the whole idea that the rain belongs to the government. And there's the dismal thought that – even in Western Washington – the drizzle is scarce enough that someone might make a fuss about watering gardens with what falls on your property.

If we were talking Yakima County, it would be one thing. But this is the land of mildew, pineapple expresses, 60-day spells of damp cruddy skies, and cold, wet Junes.

I'm afraid to ask: Who owns the clouds? The wind? The birds? The magma? The northern lights?

The editorial board visited today with Joy Gomez-Gonzalez, the new director of Centro Latino, and former director Alfonso Montoya. It was mostly a getting-to-know-you meeting, as Gomez-Gonzalez is still settling into the job she assumed on July 1. She has a lot of plans for the nonprofit organization, and you might get to meet her this weekend at Ethnic Fest in Wright Park at the Centro Latino booth.

One tidbit the two told us about is one that tall ships fans should find interesting. The tall ship, La Gloria Colombiana, will be on the Foss Waterway Aug. 2-6 as part of the 6th Annual United Latino Festival 2008. The ship’s visit is sponsored by the Pierce County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Foss Waterway Seaport and Tall Ships Tacoma.

La Gloria is a barque based in Cartagena, Colombia. At 75.9 meters long, it is slightly smaller than the Eagle (89.9 meters), the biggest of the 2008 Tall Ships participants. It was built in 1968 as a training vessel for the Colombian navy, and Gomez-Gonzalez says this will be the first visit to the United States for many of the sailors. The ship participated in the 1976 tall ships parade in New York marking the nation's bicentennial.

1. To boost recruitment and retention figures that had sagged under the weight of the Iraq War, the military responded by lowering its educational, age and moral standards. That last one is creating the most blowback for the Army.

2. Tacoma school officials might be looking at recess backwards. Instead of detracting from classroom time, it can make that time more productive – if it’s done right. Research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that structured recess led by a trained adult can make children more productive and less disruptive when they go back into the classroom.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Random thoughts about "The Dark Knight":

I saw the movie with my daughter and son-in-law Saturday. The huge parking lot was packed. The megaplex had 24 showings in multiple plexes.

How did movies about comic book superheroes (Batman Begins, Hellboy, Spider-man, Ironman, X-Men ...) and their equivalents (Darth Vader, Indiana Jones ...) come to dominate the silver screen in America?

Does this have anything to do with the war in Iraq?

The first comic book movie, to my knowlege, was "Superman" back in 1978. But at the box office, Batman and Spider-man make Superman look like he's lugging green kryptonite. Perfection is soooo boring. Spider-man and Batman have issues – they'd employ a dozen psychiatrists between them.

Why do characters like The Joker (pictured, with Batman), The Green Goblin and Lex Luther always seem to be having so much fun, while the good guys are always so serious? (Ironman is the exception to this rule.)

Also, why is the Devil always grinning, and why do evil geniuses always cackle maniacally? Are they in on some joke the rest of us don't get?

And – this is ranging far afield – why, if we read Dante at all, do we always read Dante's "Inferno" and never his "Paradiso." Is Hell really that exciting and Paradise really that dull?

Is that the joke the Joker's in on?

It's the stuff of candidates' nightmares.

On Sunday, the big front-page headline of the largest newspapers in the state – the combined Seattle Times and P-I – blared: "How state spending rose $8B under Gregoire."

Below the headline was a decidedly uncomplimentary photo of our governor and bar graphs showing how the state budget ballooned more on her watch than under any governor since Booth Gardner.

Bar graphs inside didn't help matters much. They show that Gregoire presided over big increases in the number of state workers and the size of her office budget. Meanwhile, the state government is looking at a $2 billion-plus deficit by the time the Legislature convenes in January.

The projected deficit bears out predictions that lawmakers have been spending far more than state revenues can sustain. That's a Democratic tendency. (OK – in D.C., it's also a Republican tendency.) At times like this, though, the governor - even a Democratic governor - is supposed to save the Legislature from itself.

Gregoire didn't do enough of that to ward off that killer headline. She's going to be running on some tough numbers this fall.

There are lots of conflicts on timing, but all parties – Bush, al-Maliki, Obama, McCain – are seeing a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. Fabulous – but Afghanistan has been heating up.

UW President Mark Emmert’s plan for expanding access to higher education emphasizes branch campus enrollment and could help UWT make its case for better state funding.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Today's story about the Northeast Tacoma couple who were attacked by two pit bulls as they walked their dog Friday evening is disturbing for a couple of reasons.

The sad fact that dog owners can't go for a stroll without risking harm from vicious marauding dogs is the biggest outrage. But right up there is this line from the story: "A Tacoma police spokesman did not return a page seeking comment Sunday."

We've had our own problems getting a response from TPD in the past week. Last Monday, we paged the on-duty public information officer to ask about fireworks enforcement. No response. We left a message for Assistant Chief Bob Sheehan as well. No return call.

Sheehan did call back the next day – and complained that our editorial didn't give the department due credit for its 2007 fireworks enforcement staffing levels.

Police officials can be their own worst enemy when they don't respond to requests seeking information. Worse yet, their unresponsiveness can become a matter of public safety. It shouldn't fall to victims to alert the community.

The push is on to pass a federal shield law by a veto-proof margin before Congress adjourns for the August recess.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has promised to take up the bill before lawmakers leave on their break. The legislation enjoys widespread support among House members (who passed it on a 398-21 vote), 42 state attorneys general and both presidential candidates.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues its fearmongering, somehow claiming that letting journalists do their jobs is a threat to national security. (Keep in mind that the bill makes exceptions for acts of terrorism and other harm to national security, as well as information needed to prevent death or bodily harm.)

As we said earlier this year, the public benefits most from shield laws. Compelling journalists to break confidences undermines their ability to protect vulnerable sources from retribution and to uncover information the public needs to know.

Reason Magazine is out this week with a ranking of the top 35 "nanny-state cities" in the United States. To no one's surprise, Seattle came in just behind Chicago for the country's biggest wet nurse of a metropolis.

The top two reasons, according to Reason editors: Seattle's alcohol impact area and its support of the state's smoking ban.

Chalk this up as another case of Seattle stealing Tacoma's thunder. If the fine folks at Reason would have bothered to check, they would have discovered that Tacoma pioneered restrictions on high-octane booze and that Pierce County led the state in snuffing out secondhand smoke.

You want paternalism, Tacoma's got it. We've banned fireworks, shut down casinos and forced pet owners to – get this – scoop their dogs' poop.

The Tacoma City Council should demand a recount!

Joel Stein (whose Los Angeles Times columns we sometimes run) is taking on the notion that there is nothing funny about Barack Obama. Here are a few of the reasons why he says Obama is a punch line ripe for the picking:

He’s a nerd
Yes, he seems cool because he plays basketball and fist-bumps and knows about pop music. But that’s because we’re comparing him with other politicians, all of whom are older than our grandparents. Compare Obama with other 46-year-olds and he’s Urkel. He’s the kid at the Model United Nations conference who says, “Guys, guys, c’mon. Let’s not make fun of Eastern Europe.” And the brutal truth is, even if women faint at your rallies, you’ll never feel cool inside when you have Alfred E. Neuman’s ears.

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Republican legislative candidate Marlyn Jensen wants to explain how some inflammatory anti-environmental remarks got attributed to her this week - wrongly, she says.

Democrats at a Pierce County environmental event Wednesday hooted at quotations from Jensen's answers on an online candidate questionnaire posted by the Kitsap Sun. (See today's post, 'Hanging with Pierce County greenies.')

A day later, Jensen's dismissive statements about global warming and cleaning up Puget Sound on the Kitsap Sun Web site were replaced by milder comments.

What happened, Jensen said Friday, was that friends posted facetious responses to the Sun's questionnaire, thinking the stunt "would make me laugh." Hence the changes that subsequently appeared in the online form, she said.

Well, if that's the case, Jensen's friends didn't do her any favors. Jensen has an uphill fight against state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, a one-term incumbent who is the only member of the Legislature who has commanded a Navy battleship (the USS Iowa).

Semaj Booker's latest troubles didn't make our editorial lineup this week, but that doesn't mean we haven't been talking about the kid and his repeated run-ins with the law.

Here Pat gives his take:

The illegal antics of Semaj Booker – the kid who flew to Texas last year by bluffing his way into two jetliners – began to wear thin a long time ago.

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Frank Cuthbertson feels the same way: He refused to release Semaj from juvenile detention Thursday after the 11-year-old's repeated violations of his auto-theft conviction last year. Most recently, Semaj was arrested July 5 on suspicion of burglary. He missed 40 days of school last year.

I say it's tough love time. America's No. 1 boy-criminal needs to cool his heels in detention for a while to get a taste of the consequences of a career in crime.

To which I responded:

Tough love? It’s highly unlikely that Semaj or any 11-year-old boy can fully comprehend the gravity of his actions. Their brains simply don’t work that way. The last thing a kid like Semaj needs is to be bunking with fellow delinquents who can help him hone his craft.

I say how about some tough “love” for the adults who are clearly failing this little kid? When a mother lets her kid skip school for 40 days because she is “tired of the school system,” it’s a huge red flag that the child comes by his disregard for rules honestly. And where exactly is Semaj’s father?

There has to be a reason Semaj so desperately wants to skip town. Let’s find out what it is.

Saturday: Digest – what other publications are saying

Sunday: This is the year to take a stripped-down transit package back to the voters.

Monday: The public is well-served by the county’s campaign against illegal signs on public rights of way.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

I guess I'm not retired enough yet. I still like to hang out with politicians - enough to spend a lovely summer evening Tuesday at a gathering of pols and wanna-be pols courting the green vote at the leafy Fircrest home of local enviro godmother Helen Engle.

The occasion was a sort of pep rally for Pierce Conservation Voters, the local division of Washington Conservation Voters – the coalition of environmental groups that bestows the official "green" endorsement for candidates in Washington.

No surprise - they tend to endorse Democrats. Lots of liberal Democrats (is there any other kind in Pierce County?) showed up to pay their respects.

Surprise guest was Freight Mobility Farrell, the infant daughter of Tacoma Port Director Tim Farrell and Jessyn Farrell, executive director of Transportation Choices. F.M. Farrell (actual name, Emaline Muriel) said little but gurgled happily. I believe she favors stronger limits on polluting emissions from all those diesel-fueled ships docked at the port.

Note: This is a longer-than-usual post, but don't miss legislative candidate Marlyn Jensen's reported comments on global warming cited below.

=> Read more!

Since Sound Transit was created in 1996, we've been nervous that King County would lose interest in building light rail into Pierce and Snohomish counties once it got tracks built in and around Seattle.

We're still jittery. The Sound Transit board will decide next week whether to ask the voters to approve a $9.1 billion plan that would get rail service north to Lynnwood, east through Bellevue and south to South 272nd Street on the northern reachs of Federal Way.

I've been asking board members on this end of the sound whether they think the proposed second round of light rail construction would politically undercut hopes for a third round that would reach the Tacoma Dome.

King County Councilwoman Julia Patterson says no.

"Public demand will result in third vote," she said. "It's a natural extension to the Tacoma Dome. South King will want to bring it south.

"My constituents – there's a huge percentage of South King County folk who are going to Tacoma to work. It would be incumbent on me to provide them with that connection. I can't imagine that the next board of directors would think that connection shouldn't be made."

=> Read more!

1. The state’s approval of a second alcohol impact area in Tacoma is a huge win for the neighborhood activists in the South End and East Side who’ve been battling public drunkenness and all the attendant blight.

2. State lands commissioner Doug Sutherland didn’t cover himself with glory by touching the back of a female subordinate. So far, it doesn’t look like a firing offense, given his apology and the fact that the 3-year-old complaint is only now surfacing in a political season.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

John Ladenburg joined folks from HorsesAss, The Stranger and the Seattle P-I at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally this week. The Pierce County executive and candidate for state Attorney General talked about whether Sound Transit should go to the ballot this year (not unless at least two Snohomish County members get on board) and the incumbent attorney general's handling of the top two primary case ("This isn't rocket science.").

Funny bit: Ladenburg makes a point of reminding listeners not to visit johnladenburg.com, which has been registered by a Republican operative. "I've asked Rob McKenna and his identity theft people to look into that for me. I haven't heard back yet."

HorsesAss has the podcast here.

Are Washingtonians smart? Or are they dumb?

You might have your doubts about their collective intelligence, but the state constitution presumes they are smart. Smart enough to enact laws through the initiative process.

Secretary of State Sam Reed apparently has at least a few doubts of his own.

He's just accepted Initiative 1029, which mandates more training for home-care workers, as an initiative to the people. That's what its sponsor, the powerful Service Employees International Union, wants: a place on the November ballot.

The problem is that the petitions didn't identify I-1029 as a direct-to-ballot initiative. They identified it as an initiative to the Legislature. It's there in black and white, square in the middle of the sheets, in the concise description: The measure is to be "transmitted to the Legislature of the State of Washington at its next ensuing regular session ..."

=> Read more!

When I read today's AP story, I checked the calendar to see if it was April Fool's Day. But chess boxing has reportedly been going on since 2003. The world's 213,997 existing sports must not be enough.

The rules of chess boxing:

• A chess boxing match starts at the chessboard. In this version of speed chess, each player has a total of 12 minutes in which to beat his opponent. During a player’s turn, the clock is running. When he completes a move he stops his clock, and his opponent’s clock starts ticking.

• When the contestants have played four minutes of chess between them, the board game is suspended and they put on their gloves. The boxing is in three-minute rounds. After each boxing round, contestants have a one-minute rest before returning to the chessboard. The contest can last as long as five boxing rounds and six chess rounds.

• If you knock your opponent out, the chess is over, too, and you win the match. If you beat your opponent at chess, then the boxing is over, and you win.

In the case of a draw at the chessboard, the boxer with more points in the ring is declared the winner.

We appreciate the concerns about denying a place on the ballot to Initiative 1029, the home-care measure, because the fine print. But who knows how many voters read that fine print? It should be treated as an initiative to the Legislature, which is what it says it is.

The irony gene, unique to homo sapiens, is located at position 19 on the short arm of chromosome 13. In most humans, it is entirely absent, as evidenced by this week's angry reactions to the satirical depiction of Barack Obama on the current New Yorker cover. (Reverse publish from blog)

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Sung to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," Jibjab's latest animated cartoon takes a humorous look at the 2008 campaign in "Time For Some Campaignin'."

It's worth checking out if only to see the bit about Barack Obama riding a unicorn, followed by a host of cute woodland critters.

In 2003, Army Times photographer Warren Zinn took a picture that ran in newspapers all over the world. It showed a young solder, PFC Joseph Dwyer, holding a wounded Iraqi boy. The photo made Dwyer something of a celebrity, as it put a human face on the Iraq War.

But there's a sad coda to the story. Last month, Dwyer died of substance abuse after years of mental health problems his mother says stem from his war service. Read the article here.

Now Zinn writes about what went through his mind when he learned that the subject of his most famous photo had died and agonizes that it might have contributed to Dwyer's death.

Here's the story:

By Warren Zinn
Special to The Washington Post

The e-mail was a punch in the gut: “the soldier you made famous — killed himself last Saturday — thought you should know.”
I thought I’d put photojournalism and war behind me four and a half years ago when I traded in the dusty battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan for law school in Miami. But those words reminded me that you never truly leave the battlefield behind.

I knew at once what the message meant: Joseph Dwyer was dead. I drove home in a daze and walked into my apartment. And there was Joseph, on the wall, looking at me.

=> Read more!

The irony gene, unique to homo sapiens, is located at position 19 on the short arm of chromosome 13.

In most humans, it is entirely absent, as evidenced by this week's angry reactions to the satirical depiction of Barack Obama on the current New Yorker cover.

In other humans, the gene is weak but operative. But in certain populations – comedians and sarcastic girlfriends, for example – it is excessively active, and indeed dominates the entire personality. The common designation of such individuals as "wits" is only half accurate. The irony gene has no known link to intelligence.

Exposed to irony, those who carry the strongly expressed gene will typically chortle or smirk.

Those with the weakly expressed gene will appear dumbfounded for several seconds, then say, "Oh, I get it." Those who lack it will remain dumbfounded or become annoyed. Common responses: "What the hell ...?" and "You are one sick puppy."

Genetic sampling suggests that 73 percent of Americans are unable to "get" irony even in its most elementary forms.

The New Yorker, for example, presents Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban and Middle Eastern robe. He stands in front of a portrait of Osama bin Laden, below which an American flag is burning in the fireplace.

=> Read more!

A year after the new Narrows bridge opened, the span has lived up to its billing, dramatically improving safety and clearing one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the state. Before it was built, resistance was fierce; today, protests are few and far between.

The City of Puyallup didn’t have to build a wheelchair-accessible playground at Bradley Lake Park – it did it because the right thing to do, and succeeded with the help of a determined mother.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

ChangMook Sohn knows a thing or two about Washington's economy. As the state's chief economist for more than two decades, Sohn had a knack for delivering revenue forecasts that proved at times more accurate than state lawmakers would have liked.

Sohn is running for state treasurer this year and stopped by the office this week for an endorsement interview. He might be out of the revenue forecast business, but he hasn't given up trying to predict where the state's economy is headed.

Sohn has bad news for anyone hoping for a quick economic rebound. Too many factors – oil prices and Wall Street woes among them – are in play for the economy to follow the usual path of hitting bottom and then immediately heading skyward again, he said.

Sohn expects the state's financial outlook to continue its freefall into 2009, and then even out. Economic recovery won't come quickly. We are in for, in Sohn's view, a period of prolonged pain.

Federal intervention with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is more than justified, given their central role in the nation’s housing market. Foreclosures and huge losses are still holding the nation’s economy hostage.

Tacoma’s progress in enforcing its fireworks law looks minimal conpared the the scale of violations.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Most of us can figure out whether a degree we're being offered is real or not. The litmus test: You actually have to pay tuition, take classes and pass exams.

But if you're still confused, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission offers these tips:

What is a diploma mill?

A "diploma mill" is generally defined as a nontraditional, substandard, fraudulent college that offers degrees to students who do little or no college-level work. Some diploma mills are outright frauds, sending a diploma to any applicant who pays a fee. Others may require applicants to take a few classes or document their work or life experience for credit.

How can you tell the difference between a diploma mill and a legitimate college?

=> Read more!

Three disabled Iraq war vets "adopted" by the Tacoma community hit their goal last week: They successfully climbed Mount Rainier.

Due to a communications breakdown, I only learned today that the trio, featured in a TNT feature story

Monday, made it to the top. Here's a post-climb report from a Brand X newspaper.

As I noted in a previous post, a fundraising call put out by former Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps covered the airfare to bring two of the vets to Tacoma. The climb was organized by Camp Patriot, a Montana-based organization that helps U.S. servicemen and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan participate in outdoor challenges.

This was the second Rainier climb for a Camp Patriot group. It may become an annual thing.

No, the numbers won't impress you if your neighbors kept you up all night with their bottle rockets. But Tacoma police seem to be making some headway in enforcing the city's even-sparklers-are-illegal fireworks ordinance.

TPD spokesman Mark Fulghum reports that officers handed out "at least 25 to 30 citations" last week. Not a lot in a city the size of Tacoma, but a big improvement on the 10 citations they issued last year.

Police also confiscated more than 500 pounds of incendiaries, "about double last year," Fulghum said.

More significant: Fireworks complaints fell from 918 last year to 835 this year. That either means that more Tacomans are obeying the law or more Tacomans are giving up on the police.

Let's hope it's the former.

Readers of our late, lamented Insight section will remember UPS professor Bill Kupinse, whose poems and article about his role as Tacoma's official poet laureate graced the cover earlier this spring.

I checked in with Bill for an update on the laureate scene:

The poet laureate front has been active as of late. I am running a poetry workshop on “Illumination” at TAM (Tacoma Art Museum) July 24 (you’re welcome to join us if you’re so inclined), and I’m also getting ready to read at Showcase Tacoma in early August. But mostly I’m trying to write like crazy, as my tenure file is due in six short weeks.

The workshop is free, but TAM admission required (at a 10 percent discount for workshop participants.) Advance registration required. See the website above.

Even if you're not into poetry, the workshop is a chance to hear a representative from St. John's Abbey and St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., which commissioned an amazing work of art and Scripture. Pages for the first illuminated manuscript of the Bible to be commissioned in centuries are on display in TAM's "Illuminating the Word: The St. John's Bible" exhibition, which opened Friday.

This is bound to be a summer blockbuster show for TAM. Friends who've seen it elsewhere during its current tour rave about it, as does my wife, Anne, a docent at TAM. I'll post more about "Illumination" after a members-only event at TAM Saturday night.

Our editorial yesterday chided the political parties for threatening to void the results of the Top Two primary if the state goes ahead with the election next month.

Over at Horses Ass, Goldy is on a tear after Attorney General Rob McKenna for bungling the case. He's alleging that McKenna either made a monumental mistake in not disposing of an old federal court injunction against Top Two before the state proceeded with plans to hold the election – or that he deliberately failed to act because he knew the federal court would not grant a stay.

Such procedural mistakes dogged McKenna's predecessor, Chris Gregoire, in her run for governor four years ago and could become an issue in McKenna's run against Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg this year. That's if procedural mistakes were actually made. I'll leave that to the lawyers to suss out.

But regardless of whether the state dropped the ball, the point remains that the parties should leave next month's election alone. They owe that much to the candidates and to the voters who are proceeding in good faith on the assumption that the election is legal.

UPDATE: Couple of e-mails came in after I posted the item above. The Attorney General's office sent me this letter addressed to the Republican and Democratic party lawyers refuting their argument that the state doesn't have the legal authority to proceed with the Top Two. And here's a press release from the Ladenburg camp: "This is what happens when you have an AG who has never been inside a courtroom before taking office."

We ran a letter Saturday that inspired several readers to respond in defense of John McCain.

The writer said: “I wonder what a Rove-inspired Swift Boater could do with McCain's service record. Suggest he barely graduated from the Naval Academy, crashed five aircraft, was the cause of the 1967 USS Forrestal tragedy, succumbed to torture and produced anti-U.S. propaganda, and still suffers from PTSD and related anger problems?”

Of the responses we received, I selected one by Robert Baldwin of Gig Harbor, who noted he is a retired Navy man. He wrote:

McCain was nearly the first casualty of that catastrophe. He was in the cockpit of his aircraft waiting to be catapulted on a combat mission. A rocket was inadvertently launched from another aircraft in the pack and struck McCain's plane, igniting a fierce fire which ultimately spread to other aircraft and set off several bombs.

McCain managed to scramble from his burning aircraft and joined his shipmates in combating the blaze. Several hours later, after the situation was under control, McCain returned to his squadron ready room, much to the amazement of his squadron mates who were convinced that he could not have survived the rocket impact on his plane. Far from being the cause of the tragedy, McCain heroically joined in the effort to limit the damage.

It turns out, Baldwin isn’t just any Navy retiree. He’s a retired vice-admiral. Regular letter writer Hank Searls, who was a classmate of Baldwin’s at the Naval Academy, notes in a letter today that Baldwin was “too modest to sign his letter with his rank to bolster his facts, but he was about to take command of the USS Forrestal from her previous skipper when John McCain’s plane was hit on the flight deck.” 134 men aboard the Forrestal lost their lives in the catastrophe.

I checked with Baldwin, who corroborates Searls.

Hank Searls' comments on my letter are true. We are Naval Academy classmates and good friends. I did have orders to take command of Forrestal and was about to leave the U.S. to join the ship when the accident happened. Since the ship was returning to Norfolk for repairs, I waited there.

I intentionally did not put my rank in the letter to you, but I should have mentioned that I was slated to take command of the ship, which explains my rather detailed knowledge of the circumstances. I wrote the letter not as an endorsement of John McCain but merely as an effort to set the record straight.

We just got out of Dave Seago's retirement party (tomorrow's his last day). One of our parting gifts was a mock editorial page with the mock editorial below, which I wrote.

Be warned: It's full of inside jokes. The cliches are intentional. The headline, "If true, we're ...," alludes to a reporter who once heard a newsroom rumor and exclaimed, "If true, I'm pissed" – a line that's become legend here.

(The cartoon above is by former News Tribune cartoonist Chris Britt.)

David Seago retiring?
If true, we're ....

Tacoma's uber-pundit gave back to his community and profession, in spades.

David Seago's retirement is a bitter pill to swallow.

While we can point with pride to his accomplishments, we view his departure with distinct alarm. It is hardly reassuring that the work of a journalist of such stature and talent will no longer grace the pages of The News Tribune. He is a giant of the profession.

Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Seago has dodged some bullets and bitten others. He has been the whipping boy of ultra-leftists and arch-conservatives. On the other hand, he has always landed on his feet and come up smelling like a rose.

=> Read more!

All but one of the 15 candidates for the state Supreme Court and state Courts of Appeals have signed a pledge to campaign “with integrity.”

The exception is “semi-retired” lawyer Frank Vulliet, one of two challengers seeking the Supreme Court seat held by three-term incumbent Justice Charles W. Johnson of Gig Harbor.

In a five-page letter to the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns, which promoted the pledge, Vulliet said:

While the efforts of WCEJC may be well-intentioned, the pledge conflicts with both the right and duty to inform voters of vital matters affecting the courts, and their right to have as much information as available on which to make their choice. In the longer term, the restriction on discussing negative material conflicts with its purpose: to instill and maintain public confidence in those same courts.

He added:

Many candidates, myself included, run for judicial office not because they are “more fair,” “more impartial,” or “more competent” than the next lawyer or incumbent judge, but because they see things not as they should be and have ideas and a desire to make changes and improvements so public confidence is justified. It is impossible to discuss such matters openly and in an intelligent manner without saying things that may cause the public to question the courts. For that reason I am unwilling to sign your pledge.

(Click on “Read More” below for the full text of Vulliet’s letter. Read the pledge here.)

The committee’s pledge drive grew out of contentious state Supreme Court races in recent years that reached new lows in acrimony and political aggressiveness – chiefly because the hyper-aggressive Building Industry Association of Washington started backing favored Supreme Court candidates and running tough campaign ads.

The BIAW is concentrating its energies this year on backing Republican Dino Rossi’s bid for governor – which is why we’ll probably see generally polite Supreme Court campaigns this year. Unless Vulliet plans to sharply criticize Johnson for some of his rulings. That would seem fair game to me; it all depends on the tone.

For details on this year’s Supreme Court candidates, go to www.VotingforJudges.org.

=> Read more!

A lot of taxpayer money is going down the drain with the Key Peninsula sexual abuse case settlement. The bigger tragedy, of course, is what happened to the children in the absence of any real safeguards.

The gay pride proclamation shouldn’t have become a political football for the Pierce County Council, but let’s keep some perspective here. The Council did approve domestic-partner benefits earlier this year, with only one Republican vote, and that’s the vote that mattered.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Except in times of war – and maybe not even then – an entire branch of the U.S. military just doesn't get a bigger rebuke than the Air Force got Wednesday. After twice botching the ultra-critical procurement of new aerial refueling tankers, the USAF saw its authority over the decision unceremoniously yanked from it by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Washington's political parties are posing a serious threat to the democratic process by threatening to voice the results of the top two primary.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Here’s a coincidence. As I was finishing up an editorial on a Spokane-based online diploma mill (which bemoans the fact that the Justice Department won’t release the names of its customers), into my e-mail popped a spam advertising . . . a diploma mill.

One line I love: “You can even become a Doctor & receive all The benefits that comes with it!”

Here’s the text, complete with misspellings:

SAD because of Low EDUCATION? Cheap price Degree/Bacheelor/MasteerMBA/PhDD Certificate

It cost you nothing(Yes! $0) to give us a call, We Wiwll contact you back

Absolutely NO exams/tests/classes/books/interviews

=> Read more!

A stark clash of values – or partisanship, or something – at the Pierce County Council meeting today: The council refused to approve a gay pride day proclamation on a 4-3 party-line vote.

Tim Farrell, who might be described as "quietly out," introduced the proclamation, a rather garden-variety designation of next Saturday as "Pride Day in Pierce County." Its most controversial language "encourages all residents to join in celebrating the spirit and dedication of this vibrant community."

Farrell came away steaming after the council's four Republicans – Shawn Bunney, Dick Muri, Terry Lee and Roger Bush – refused to add it to the agenda.

"I figured I had the votes because Shawn had voted for domestic partnerships," Farrell told us. "Come on now, it's a pride resolution. I'm not asking for any money."

Farrell says gay-pride resolutions are routinely adopted elsewhere, including in more conservative jurisdictions than Pierce County. He also says the county council hasn't, to his knowledge, refused to adopt any proclamation in recent years.

Can't confirm any of that as of the moment. But Bunney, et al, appear to have been as blindsided as Farrell was. Republicans don't have the same political reflexes or constituents as Democrats. That's just a reality – no point in being scandalized by it. The textbooks say: Line up the votes first.

No Washington state politician runs a more aggressive taxpayer-funded, credit-grabbing publicity operation than U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.

Nothing evil about it. But it's just so blatant. Here are a couple headlines from press releases her office sent out today:

Murray Delivers Billions for Tri-Cities Priorities in Critical Senate Spending Bill

Bill includes major victory for Hanford cleanup including increase of more than $221 million over President's budget request

And ....

Senator Murray Includes $2.2 Million for Flood Control Projects in Areas Devastated by December 2007 Flooding

After President ignores flood control projects in Centralia and Chehalis River Basin, Murray includes maximum funding levels for projects in Senate spending bill

Patty Murray, the one-time "mom in tennis shoes," now boasts big-time appropriations clout – and boast she does.

By contrast, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, hardly ever sends out a press release when he procures a slice of the federal budget for the Sixth District, although he certainly is no piker in that regard. I can't even remember the last time I saw a press release from his office.

Then again, Dicks is a congressman-for-life and probably doesn't feel the need to thump his ample chest. I like quiet porkers better.

Beth Wolfe, one of the organizers involved in helping three disabled Iraq veterans climb Mount Rainier (news story here), sends this Tuesday morning update:

I climbed to Camp Muir yesterday with the three veterans. Chad and Joey were in the first group with RMI guide Art Rousch. Ryan was in the second group with Curtis Fawley and Micah Clark. The guys did amazing! It was hard work and their packs were the same weight as everyones.

After we crossed Pebble Creek and had a break I asked Ryan how he was doing, he said he couldn't be better.... he was back in Washington and was on Mt. Rainier! It was a very long day for the guys. We ended up leaving Paradise (with a group of about 20) at 10:15 am and the last veteran up to Muir , Ryan, arrived at 6:30 last night. Needless to say our small day hike group got off the Mountain about 9:00 p.m. last night.

The group plans on leaving Wednesday night at midnight to summit. About 8:30 a.m. on Thursday their will be a fly over the Mountain and Ashford to congratulate the group. Then Thursday their will be BBQ at Ashford . . .

A little backstory here: Beth is a neighbor of mine in Tacoma. She came by one day last month asking for advice on raising enough money to fly the veterans out here for the Rainier climb.

My next move was to email former Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps, who likes to do good things and get things done. As I expected, Phelps put the word out to his friends, and the task of covering the air fares was accomplished in two days. Well done, all!

Go here for more on Camp Patriot, the Montana-based organization that helps wounded Irag veterans take on outdoor adventures and challenges.

Not many Washingtonians realize that Washington's state constitution goes farther than the U.S. Constitution to protect individual rights.

How this came to be and what it means is usefully explored in a short paperback published by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, the conservative think tank based in Olympia.

Based on a quick skimming, I don't detect any obvious bias in the 116-page commentary on Article I, Section 1 of the Washington Constitution - the portion that lays out the individual rights the state's founders sought to protect.

"To Protect and Maintain Individual Rights: A Citizen's Guide to the Washington Constitution, Article I" is authored by EFF attorneys Jonathan Bechtle and Michael Reitz. They asked state Supreme Court Justice Charles W. Johnson, who teaches a law school course on the state constitution, to review their work during the book's preparation.

Johnson, a Gig Harbor resident running for his fourth term this year, wrote a forward for the book. Order it for $9.95 a copy here.

Tim Eyman, who promotes initiatives for a living, just sent out another one of his intimate emails – addressed, as always, to “our thousands of supporters throughout the state (cc'd to all media outlets -- reporters, columnists, editorial writers, and others in newspapers, radio, and TV).”

As always, he also included a pitch for contributions and helpfully pointed out that you can give by Visa, Mastercard or PayPal.

What made today’s missive a howler was Eyman’s claim that the state constitution requires the sales tax charge on state transportation projects to be spent on transportation. Which is, of course, dead wrong.

Embedded in Eyman’s overall claim (full text available below) that his latest brainstorm (and hope for a payday) Initiative 985, would boost the state’s economy was this statement:

Charging sales taxes on transportation projects diverts $211 million per year in transportation dollars into the general fund for non-transportation spending. Even though such revenues are CONSTITUTIONALLY REQUIRED (sic) to be spent on transportation, they are regularly diverted to non-transportation spending.

Where does the state constitution say that, I asked Eyman by email. I asked for chapter and verse. Eyman bobbed and weaved.

That's not what I wrote. The 18th amendment to the Constitution requires gas tax revenues to go toward transportation, specifically "highway purposes." State sales taxes (6.5%) on those projects siphons those gas tax revenues into the general fund where they are spent on non-transportation spending. In the last session, Olympia did look at stopping that in order to get more dollars into projects. But there was fierce resistence to doing that because they like the diversion of dollars from transportation to non-transportation spending.

You may take exception to how I characterize this diversion, but there's no doubt that it, in fact, occurs. It is not an out-of-the-mainstream view either -- even the Legislature acknowledges that this diversion is happening
and they've even gone so far as to exempt certain projects, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, from it.

C’mon, Tim, I pressed. Quote the actual words of the state constitution that requires the sales tax on transportation projects to be spent on transportation projects.

Some more back and forth. Still no citation from the state constitution. Finally, at the end of the day, this remarkable concession from the Eternal Defender of Taxpayers and Scourge of Bloodsucking Politicians Everywhere:

After our exchange, I contacted our attorneys and talked with them about what the three of us (the other being TNT reporter Joe Turner) have been debating . . . In light of your comments and his, I will refrain from making this argument in the future. However, as you can see from his email, there is a valid argument to be made on this issue. Nonetheless, I'm willing to concede the point and will instead highlight other reasons why I-985 is a reasonable, positive proposal.

In other words, what Eyman said about the “constitutional requirement” is baloney. He made it up.

For the full text of the Eyman email in question, click on ...

=> Read more!

This past weekend was the first time the outer loop of Five Mile Drive was closed to vehicular traffic on Sunday (until 1 p.m.) as well as Saturday. I'd be interested in any reactions folks have to it. The closure will last through August, and Metro Parks will survey park users and take feedback.

As a regular Sunday morning walker in the park, I welcomed the closure. But this time of year, we're mostly on the trails, not on the road. (In the winter, the trails are often too muddy.) Even there, what I noticed was how much quieter the park was without traffic.

The trails we walk get close to the road at many points, and engine noise can spoil the natural experience, drowning out bird songs. This Sunday's walk was a much quieter one than usual – more like what it's like in winter when few cars are on the loop.

We told you last week that our Sunday Insight section – which we cherished as much as any of you – was disappearing as of today. We also told you we would do our best to shift as much of its contents as possible to other pages.

So you'll be seeing changes in the weeks ahead. Check today's editorial page for Change No. 1: A design that permits an in-depth look at a public issue, in this case the psychiatric traumas of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most of the time, our Sunday editorials will run horizontally across the top of the page, allowing room for the longer articles that would otherwise have run in Insight.

In the future, you'll likely be hearing a little less from us and a lot more from yourselves, as we place greater emphasis on short reader-written commentaries (in addition to our letters to the editor). You'll soon see invitations to offer your reasoned views on specific issues.

Stay tuned.

Attorney General Rob McKenna made a case last month that prison inmates should be considered non-persons for purposes of the Public Records Act.

We said his interpretation of the law went too far. This week, the state Supreme Court agreed. Sort of.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that a prison’s ability to intercept inmate mail does not conflict with prisoners’ rights to obtain government information.

Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center points out that the majority opinion clearly states "the Department may not deny a public records request based on the requester’s status as an inmate.” But, as the dissenters argue, giving inmates the ability to request public records is worthless if prison officials can bar inmates from receiving those records.

It seems that it will take further court decisions – or legislative action – to truly answer the question of inmates' ability to access public records.

Rich Roesler, the Spokesman Review's statehouse reporter, posits that the dissenters might prevail next time. Newly appointed Justice Debra Stephens, who is known as an open-records advocate, was not on the court when the case that prompted this week's decision was heard.

The News Tribune's opinion staff wishes everyone a safe and happy Fourth of July. But we really should have had this party two days ago.

Peter de Bolla, the British author of a new historical book, "The Fourth of July," notes that John Adams, no less, believed that July 2, 1776, would be celebrated, as he wrote his wife, with "pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one from one end of the Continent to the other from this time forward forever more."

Logically, the United States of America was born on July 2, when the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Britain. A second vote was taken two days later, and 12 of the 13 colonies (I had no idea that New York had abstained) voted again to endorse the Declaration of Independence. The last of those famous signatures, John Hancock's among them, was not added until nearly two months later.

A Wall Street Journal review this week called the book "fascinating" but dinged Bolla for using too many phrases like "semiotic functions" and "habitual topoi." And here's a link to Bolla's own list of "Five Things You Never Knew about the Fourth of July and the Founding of America."

Betsy Ross never made that flag, for instance.

The latest issue of Outside magazine lists Tacoma on its 2008 "Best Towns" list, citing the city's downtown rejuvenation, lively arts scene and abundant outdoor recreational opportunities.

The article (PDF document here) quotes city resident and Outside subscriber Lucinda Weddle:

Mount Rainier, a mild climate, Point Defiance Park, scuba diving, clean air, Commencement Bay, no state income tax.

The mag didn't explain how it determined its selections, but the headline says:

These 20 stars of America's 21st Century Renaissance are riding a wave of civic reinvention and fresh ideas.

Can't beat that for good pub.

Thanks to the City of Tacoma's Forward Tacoma email newsletter for calling this one to our attention. Subscribe here.

Was Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg lowballing the cost of his proposed ballot measure to save open space? It looked like it, but he wasn't.

The County Council indefinitely tabled his proposal Monday. Our news story the next day indicated that a property tax of "up to 16 cents per $1,000 of assessed value" would cost the owner of a $300,000 home about $2 a month, attributing the latter estimate to Ladenburg.

An alert reader sent us a letter to the editor asked if Ladenburg was guilty of "deception or faulty math." At 16 cents per $1,000, the actual cost would be more like $4 a month.

Our editors should have caught the discrepancy. County finance director Patrick Kenney explained it to me today, but I was almost sorry I asked. To make a long story short:

Not all of the 16 cents per $1,000 would have been devoted to the preservation of open space and farmland. But the portion that would have been would, based on a rough estimate, have cost the owner of a $300,000 home about $2 a month.

The tax impact is a "guesstimate," Kenney said, because it is based on some factors that won't be known until November, including the trend in property values that are particularly unpredictable this year.

Opponents of an initiative sponsored by a powerful labor union called on Secretary of State Sam Reed to reject it because its petition forms are allegedly misleading.

I think they have a point.

Local 775 of Service Employees International Union were to turn in signatures today for Initiative 1029, which would set higher training requirements for workers who care for the elderly or disabled people.

The measure is fiercely opposed by the home-care industry, which contends it will drive up costs and make it harder to recruit workers. Companies that provide private-pay care would have to pay for the training. State and federal taxpayers would pay for training state-paid workers.

The Community Care Coalition, an industry group, urged Reed by letter to reject the SEIU petitions because they describe the initiative as an initiative to the people, which would require a statewide vote in November. But the text of the initiative calls it an initiative to the Legislature, which means the measure would first go to the 2009 Legislature, and then to the ballot if lawmakers fail to approve it.

In an earlier Political Buzz blog post, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office said he thought the office would accept the petitions because he didn't think it was a big mistake.

I think it is a fundamental mistake, and who can tell whether it was in fact an intentional? It's a lot easier to tell potential signers that the initiative would give the people a chance to decide the issue right away than it is to explain that it would go to the Legislature first.

The tactic could be a strategy to pressure the Legislature to approve the training requirements. An SEIU-backed bill to the effect failed in this year's session. If the Legislature approves the initiative next year, the SEIU is spared the cost of running an expensive campaign to pass the initiative in November.

Seems to me the SecState's office should accept the petitions only provisionally today, subject to legal review. Here's what a spokesman for the office said this morning:

The Secretary of State’s Office did receive a letter from an attorney representing Community Care Coalition of Washington late yesterday afternoon. Currently, the office is reviewing the letter’s claims with legal counsel from the Attorney General’s Office. Meanwhile, the agency will proceed with accepting the petition sheets from I-1029 sponsors. They are scheduled to turn in sheets at 2 p.m. today.

Read on for the text of the Community Care Coalition letter to Reed. Read the case for Initiative 1029 here.

=> Read more!

No one ever accused the state Supreme Court of a rush to judgment. Ask the court to hear your case and it could be months before you hear if it's been accepted. Many more months could go by before the court issues a decision.

So we were intrigued to hear from Justice Mary Fairhurst, who visited this week for her candidate endorsement interview, that justices can take a hit to their pocketbooks if they don't get their work done on time.

Come to find out, the members of the court sign a declaration each month declaring – under penalty of perjury – that there are no cases sitting on their desks that have been there six months or longer. If ever a justice was that tardy, the state would withhold his or her paycheck until the work got done.

Can you imagine some schoolmarmish court official chiding the likes of the honorable Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, telling him to hurry up and turn in his homework? Neither can we, but it's kind of fun to try.

Friday:
We honor the Fourth of July by reprinting the Declaration of Independence.

Saturday:
We’re not so sure that losing the Sonics is a huge blow to Seattle.

Sunday:
Continuing our 125th anniversary series on The News Tribune’s corporate and journalist values, we examine our value of journalistic independence.

Monday:

Congress should fix a Civil War-era provision in the federal whistleblower act that requires whistleblowers to keep mum about their allegations until the Justice Department has had a chance to review them. In practice, this allows the administration to sit on complaints for years.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Carter Clews writes editorials – some people might call them rants – for a group called Americans for Limited Government. He had some strong opinions about the U.S. Supreme Court's widely discussed ruling this month on a Second Amendment case.

Here's a sample of his style:

So, what’s Lord Stephen’s dual message in his dissenting opinion?
To the Founding Fathers: Eat dirt.

And to you: Drop dead.

"Lord Stephen" is Justice Stephen Breyer, upon whom Clews heaps truckloads of disdain. For entertainment if nothing else, I recommend a look at Clews' complete editorial.

Makes us newspaper opinionaters look like a bunch of pansies, doesn't he?

Puget Sound Energy representatives made a point today of telling us about the utility's rebuttal to claims that selling it to private investors is too risky for its customers in Washington. We echoed that concern in a June 22 editorial.

PSE filed responses today with the state Utilities and Transportation Commission, which is considering a proposed $7 billion acquisition of PSE by a consortium of Australian investors and Canadian pension funds.

Our editorial followed formal opposition to the deal by the state attorney general's office of public counsel, which represents consumers in cases before the commission.

The deal, PSE argued, contains these benefits:

Customer benefits
• Provides $100 million in rate credits and reduced costs for customers
• Commits capital from the new investors to meet PSE’s $5 billion ($1 billion annually over the next five years) in infrastructure and energy supply requirements for the region
• Confirms headquarters, management and employees all remain in Washington
• Adds new service quality index (SQI) on billing and tougher SQI penalties
• Expands Green Power, customer renewable energy and energy efficiency commitments
• Sets goal for PSE to be carbon neutral by 2050, making PSE the first such investor- owned utility in the region
• Provides $5 million capital infusion to the Puget Sound Energy Foundation for local community efforts
• Commits to seek an increase in the fund to help low-income PSE customers pay their energy bills

Local governance and continued oversight
• Assures three current local board members, including independent chairman, on new boards of directors
• Assures continued state and federal regulatory oversight
• Assures on-going comprehensive financial and operational reporting

Financial security
• Provides additional safeguards to protect the financial strength of PSE
• Retains earnings, if required, with dividend restrictions on PSE and Puget Energy

Read on for PSE's complete press release.

=> Read more!

The people who want to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Washington seem almost obsessive about expunging the words "assisted suicide" from the English language.

I noted earlier that Initiative 1000 would forbid state agencies from using the term. In fact, "assisted suicide" would cease to exist "under the law." The proper term: "obtaining and self-administering life-ending medication."

I-1000's sponsors turned in their signatures today, enough to put it on the November ballot. The Washington Medical Association, an opponent, was ready to pounce. Its president, Dr. Brian Wicks, immediately issued a statement condemning physician-assisted suicide as "fundamentally incompatible with the role of physicians as healers."

One of his gripes had less to do with ethics than with nomenclature:

Under I-1000, if a physician prescribes a lethal overdose, when that physician completes the death certificate, he or she is required — actually required — to list the underlying disease (say lung cancer) as the cause of death, even when the doctor knows full well that the patient died due to the suicidal overdose he or she prescribed. To my knowledge, there’s no other situation in medicine in which the death certificate is deliberately falsified — and in which this falsification is mandated by law.

An analogy might be a cancer patient who has a fatal reaction to chemotherapy. Is it the cancer that killed him or the chemo? The chemo would be listed as the immediate cause of death – and it wasn't even intended to kill him, unlike the drugs used for assisted suicide.

Americans have a habit of trying to soften the reality of death with euphemisms. We don't like to talk about it; we don't like to think about it. "Coffin" smacked too much of the grave, so we substituted "casket." "Tombstone" was more than we could handle, so it's "monument."

But things are what they are. Pretending that a physician-assisted suicide isn't a "physician-assisted suicide" won't make it any less of a suicide assisted by a physician.

For some reason, our wire editors passed over a New York Times story Tuesday that really startled me. The third paragraph is the eye-opener.

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. The unclassified parts of the decision were released on Monday.

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Whoo. That had sharp edges. The ruling was unanimous, and the panel included chief judge David B. Sentelle, described by the Times as one of the court's most conservative members.

The administration's whole legal basis for holding detainees at Gitmo is being dismantled piece by piece at all levels of the U.S. courts. It's reassuring to see our judiciary asserting its independence and insisting on the rule of law.

There’s terrible irony in the report that the harsh interrogation techniques countenance by the Bush administration were originally developed by communist regimes in China and the Soviet Union.

Starbucks’s strategy of trying to cover the planet with coffee stores has hit the wall as the company is forced to close 600 stores in the U.S. It turns out that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Sports copy editor Dustin Lane sent this around on The News Tribune's internal email at 9 a.m. this morning:

I’ve got four great seats for tonight’s M’s game against Toronto – 16 rows behind home plate. $40 each.

To which I replied:

Do we pay you $40 or do you pay us $40 to take them?

This from Dustin, finally, at 4:03 p.m.:

Alright, nobody took me up on this earlier, so the tickets are free to whoever shows up first at the Reader Rep desk.

Hey, I would have taken them if he'd paid me only $20 a ticket. As long as I didn't have to actually go to the game.

Our Monday editorial opposing a plan to let voters decide this fall whether to end Tacoma City Council term limits drew a couple of corrections from readers. (The proposal passed Tuesday on a 5-4 vote; story here.)

First, from His Honor the mayor, Bill Baarsma:

Update: TNT city hall reporter Jason Hagey tells me the mayor's mistaken: A city charter amendment voters approved in 2004 requires a charter review at least every 10 years.

Dave:
I agree with today’s editorial. I would like to make one minor correction. The charter review process is not required—although there should be a provision in the code at least. (And I will offer one before I leave office at the end of my term.)

Since the great recall of 1970, it has been the practice of the city council to have a review process every decade or so. I served on two of the review committees—during the 1970’s and 1980’s. I sponsored the resolution that set forth the review in the 1990’s. The most recent review was in 2003.

One major reason for the periodic review was because of the antics of recalled five. They would collectively put issues on the agenda without notice or public comment—including charter changes. That all changed after the recall election when Gordon Johnston secured support on the council for the first review. Reviews followed during the terms of mayors Sutherland, Vialle and yours truly. Well over 90% of all charter amendments—minor and major—went through a lengthily review with much public outreach. As a result, most of the proposed changes passed.

And from Catherine Rudolph of the Tacoma-Pierce County Association of Realtors:

The editorial on Tacoma City Council terms limits said that Julie Anderson’s term is up in 2009. Its actually up in 2011, with Mike Lonergan’s term ending in 2009.

More from soon-to-be-man-about-town Dave Seago, who is supposedly taking a few days off:

I found a lady in a straw cowgirl hat supervising a bunch of workers at the spot in front of the Museum of Glass where the late, lamented "Water Forest" artwork is supposed to be. She turned out to be Amy McBride, the city's arts administrator.

My first thought was that the new and improved version of "Water Forest" we've been waiting years for was being installed. Oh, happy day!

Not so, but still good news: What is being installed today, in time for the mobs of Tall Ships Tacoma visitors descending on the Foss Waterway this week, is a more modest but practical solution in the same space.

Short columns made of the same clear polymers that "Water Forest" was made of will support flat, patterned surfaces made of the same material. What you get is arty but durable benches visitors can sit on. A nice compromise, I think.

During the first Tall Ships event, the holes on this spot were covered with wooden boxes and everybody hated it. McBride hasn't given up hope that "Water Forest" will be restored to its rightful place but, she said, that is currently subject to "financial negotiations."

I just caught up with David Ottey, head of the Emergency Food Network. I wanted to ask him about the report we had in the paper Friday about FISH Food Bank not having enough to go around.

If food bank shelves are nearly bare, that's worthy of an editorial. But Ottey says it's not the case in Pierce County.

The Emergency Food Network, which supplies FISH and the other charitable food pantries, has been able to not only keep up with the usual demand but also absorb an almost 20 percent increase in demand for food.

There is a potential threat on the horizon though. Ottey has been reading about supermarkets starting to pull items off shelves closer to their expiration dates. That means less food for organizations like EFN that rely heavily on salvage from grocery store chains.

1. Something like justice was served with the convictions of the five Makah rogue whalers, who violated the Marine Mammals Protection Act in an exceptionally cruel way.

2. Other school boards are doing it. It’s time the Tacoma School Board started televising and videotaping its meetings.

3. Again, the fireworks plague. If we can't obey the law, let’s at least be considerate of our neighbors.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.