This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.
Because President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided to police Iraq on the cheap in 2003, they left the back door open to disaster.
They didn’t deploy enough troops to lock down the Syrian and Iranian frontiers, and guerrillas and terrorists gradually figured out that they could launch cross-border raids and infiltrate Iraq with near-impunity. American forces and their Iraqi allies have paid dearly for that blunder.
Such is the context of Sunday’s U.S. raid on a Syrian village six miles from the Iraqi border. Part of Gen. David Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy has been to deny the enemy any sanctuary whatsoever. Despite the caterwauling of Syrian officials – who’ve never had qualms about ordering assassinations in neighboring Lebanon – the raid was thoroughly defensible.
The defense does presume that U.S. military and intelligence officers are more credible than the Syrians. The latter say the raid did nothing but kill “innocent civilians,” including four children. The former say it killed Abu Ghadiyah, an Iraqi chief of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, and fellow guerrillas before they carried out an imminent raid of their own. Abu Ghadiyah is believed to have personally led the attack last May that killed 11 Iraqi police officers.
This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.
Builders have the right to give big to Pierce County executive candidates – and voters have the right to know about it.
Anyone who has lived in Pierce County for a few election cycles can hardly be surprised by news that developers are flexing their financial muscle in local political races.
This county isn’t called the poster child for uncontrolled sprawl for nothing. Developers have wielded a lot of influence over the decades, and they didn’t become a force by sitting on the sidelines.
As The News Tribune’s David Wickert reported this week, three prominent builders and developers have contributed a total of $50,500 to county executive candidates.
The local companies – Investco, Corliss Resources and Tucci & Sons – and their executives have given far in excess of the $800 limit on contributions by any single person or business.
Nothing illegal about that. State law permits companies to contribute through their affiliates, and builders tend to form a lot of limited liability companies in the normal course of doing business.
Good Lord, the presidential campaigns are getting REALLY personal.
Somebody who loves me actually sent me this video to try to shame me into voting for the Terrorist Socialist candidate for president.
Check it out here, and tell me if you don't think that wasn't dirty pool.
Now, the version of the video my loved one sent me fingered me by name. It looks like the above link, due to the way the whole email thing works, doesn't actually name anyone. But you'll see how it works.
Too late to shame me, though: I already voted.
One of the major arguments made against Initiative 1000, the aid-in-dying ballot measure, is that patients' pain can be controlled these days, so there's no need for them to end their lives prematurely.
This McClatchy Newspapers article, however, suggests that pain management in this country falls short, with one-third of patients reporting that their pain is not well-controlled.
Here's the article:
By Robert S. Boyd
McClatchy NewspapersWASHINGTON — Medical science has learned a great deal about the causes of pain and ways to relieve it, pain experts say, but for a host of reasons, the treatment of pain and suffering has improved hardly at all in recent years.
John Seffrin, the president of the American Cancer Society, calls this "a national health-care crisis of under-treated pain."
"Nearly all cancer pain can be relieved, but fewer than half of our patients report adequate pain relief," Rebecca Kirch, the society’s associate director of policy, told a pain seminar in Washington last week.Hospitals do a little better than that in managing pain for patients with all kinds of illnesses, according to a survey to be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
