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 be published in tomorrow's print edition.
A simple question suffices to figure out who's to blame for the fighting that's broken out between Israel and Hamas:
Which side would stop attacking if the other side stopped attacking it?
The question has been answered. Hamas has been firing rockets at Israel – in increasing numbers – for years. It unleashed a barrage on Israel after it unilaterally junked a cease-fire on Dec. 18.
Yes, Israel had been cutting off shipments of goods to Gaza. But that's precisely because Hamas has been relentlessly smuggling in weaponry from Iran and turning Gaza into a vast staging area for attacks on Israel.
No government on earth can be expected to stand idly by as its citizens are bombarded by a neighboring nation.
Fatah, which has the same grievances as Hamas, doesn't feel compelled to fire artillery at Israeli towns. Heaven knows Gaza's civilians – whom Hamas routinely uses as human shields – have suffered enough from this conflict. But there's no question as to who's been perpetuating it.
This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.
Transit the big winner
on the 2008 agenda
A tough economy slowed progress in other important areas.
On Sunday, The News Tribune editorial board will publish its annual civic agenda for 2009. But as 2008 draws to a close, it’s time to look back at the progress – or lack of it – made on this year’s agenda.
Invest in transportation infrastructure
This was our top agenda item – and the one that met with the greatest success in 2008, thanks to voters in Pierce, King and Snohomish counties.
Even though gas prices were still high and the economy spiraling down, voters recognized the importance of expanding mass transit in the Puget Sound region. On Nov. 3 they voted – resoundingly – to increase the sales tax to pay for a $17.9 billion Sound Transit ballot measure.
That investment, which will pay off in more bus, train and light rail service in the South Sound, is crucial to the region’s economic development and quality of life. Voters were wise to acknowledge that.
Repair urban centers
Given the state of the economy – it turns out that the nation was in recession the entire year – it’s not surprising that only incremental progress was made in this area.
You cannot accuse state Rep. Mark Miloscia of ignoring the big picture.
The Federal Way Democrat and his Republican seatmate Skip Priest were in this morning to talk about the looming threat of another legislative session. We wanted to find out what dogs the Federal Way area might have in the looming battle royal over the busted state budget.
Miloscia spent the better part of a half hour giving us a stemwinder that covered: health care costs, the wage gap between rich and poor, the "disappearing" middle class, the decline of the two-parent family, poverty as a root cause, the root causes of poverty, affordable housing and growth management, homelessness, the dishonesty of society, the need for a higher minimum wage, outsourcing and the lamentable transition to a service economy, the need for measurable outcomes in government and ...
And other issues I couldn't write fast enough to catch.
Somehow I don't think even a 105-day session will be able to handle all that. Whatever Miloscia's faults as a lawmaker may be, lack of passion isn't among them.
As something of a spin practitioner myself, I can only admire the chutzpah of whichever Boston Globe editorialist wrote the response below to the blowup in Gaza.
Arguments over who started the fighting "seem beside the point"?
Does that gem of denial also apply to, say, the mysterious entity that started bombing Poland in 1939, or who might have attacked whom in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, or the inconsequential question of who invaded Iraq in 2003?
THE GAZA CALAMITIES
The Boston GlobeAS ISRAELI bombing raids over Gaza kill and maim civilians along with Hamas militants, arguments about which side caused the collapse of a cease-fire that prevailed since last June seem beside the point.
Recently a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” surfaced in the news, something that is in such bad taste my fingers can barely type it. It’s one of those stories commentators hesitate to touch because it doesn’t deserve any attention, but when I learned this morning that Tennessee RNC chairman Chip Saltsman’s chances of becoming the head of Republican National Committee increased because he distributed it, I got a little sick.
Outgoing RNC chair Robert M. Duncan denounced the CD that first surfaced in 2007 but obviously not loud enough because it showed up in the hands of Chip Saltsman in the form of Christmas presents. Apparently the man never heard of candy.
“Lighten up!” is the cry on conservative radio. "It was a joke.”
As if jokes were simple things.
Humor has been studied by almost every major academic discipline and it is far from simple.
