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 ..."

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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)

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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.

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