This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

The “Journey of Repentance” to be staged in Japan this summer by a handful of Tacoma-area anti-nuclear folks seems little more than moral preening.

But the big, angry response it’s gotten from this newspaper’s readers (see opposite page) shows that American feelings about World War II remain raw 64 years after the war ended. What’s mostly overlooked in this millionth dispute over Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the wartime context of the nuclear strikes on those cities.

Each time someone condemns the atomic bombings, someone else snarls back about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march. But the issue is more complex than Pearl Harbor vs. Hiroshima. The bombs reflected the industrial nature of the conflict – a “total war” that drove attacks not only on enemy forces but also on enemy homelands.

Opponents of the nuclear bombings tend to see them as unique moral horrors. But in terms of their killing power – far less than later nuclear warheads – the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply more efficient ways of visiting wholesale death on enemy cities and factories. Conventional bombers had already killed vast numbers of noncombatants before the atom bombs fell.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Those who love Tacoma’s historic structures and root for downtown’s revitalization are accustomed to raised hopes and dashed expectations – but the two don’t usually arrive on the same day.

They did Tuesday when two developers announced news that they have a promising plan to save the 93-year-old former Elks Temple in downtown Tacoma.

Grace Pleasants of Heritage Properties and development partner Rick Moses unveiled a deal to purchase the Elks building from its Portland, Ore., owner, immediately resell it to the famed McMenamins pub-and-hotel brand, and then build a grocery store and apartments next door.

Meanwhile, down at City Hall, Tacoma officials were delivering some bad news: The 119-year-old Luzon Building may finally succumb to years of neglect.

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Not all journalists are of like minds, even when it comes to the practice of journalism itself. Like several readers, TNT columnist Peter Callaghan disagreed with our editorial yesterday about former Tacoma resident Warren Yeakey's lawsuit against the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for its news coverage of a fatal November 2006 construction crane accident in Bellevue.

Pete's e-mail to editorial page editor Pat O'Callahan:

Disagree with your conclusion. In our attempt to combat all libel lawsuits and rulings we stood firmly behind some of the worst reporting I have seen in a decade or more. The PI did much more than report two fact. It breathlessly suggested that it had solved the crime. Any reader would have concluded that a terrible accident that killed a man in his apartment had
been caused by a drugged out crane operator.

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This was meant to be a comment on Michael Allen’s post today, but I’m a wordy gal, so I thought I'd post it as an open letter. I’ll preface it by saying it’s an honor to have this dialogue with Mr. Allen.

Mr. Allen:

In your previous post you wondered why people "hate Palin." To which I say, there is a difference between “hating” a candidate, and finding them under qualified for office.

If an athlete doesn’t perform well, and we say he’s not ready for the big leagues, this is not “hate,” this is not a personal attack, but rather a little closer to stating the obvious.

All politicians know that when they run for an office they expose their family to harsh scrutiny from the media, and as you said, Sarah Palin got more than her fair share. True, some in the media, mostly comedians, portrayed the Palin family like they belonged in the Jerry Springer Show not in the governor’s mansion.

They capitalized on the teenage romance that played out on Myspace. They made tabloid fodder out of Palin’s teenage daughter’s pregnancy. They were all too happy to air the grievances of the disgruntled teenage father and play up his mother’s drug use and run-in with the law. They turned the employment termination of an estranged brother-in-law into “Troopergate.”

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Well Sarah Palin is resigning. And in retrospect, it’s not surprising that she failed to endure the hateful media barrage that began just about a year ago.

No, Sarah is not, as she hints, resigning the Alaska governorship to launch a 2012 presidential campaign. There is no way she can be a serious presidential candidate without serving one full term as Alaska’s governor (that was always the media’s purported objection to her candidacy, that she “lacked experience”).

In fact, the main reason Palin is resigning is to bring peace to her family. The vicious attacks on the Palins are unprecedented in modern American politics. Even for Gerry Ford, Reagan, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, the media stopped short of an all-out attack on the children. But the Palin family got both barrels from day one. And the poison would have continued.

Why did they despise her so? True, Gov. Palin had failings and she made mistakes. But I think the real reason they hated her also has to do with family. Palin touched a raw nerve in liberals. She had the audacity to successfully combine traditional femininity, motherhood and conservative ideology with a powerful career – her own brand of feminism.

Moreover, she had the audacity to conceive and raise a Down's syndrome child while pursuing that career. To feminists and media leftists, that was Sarah Palin’s unstated, and unforgivable, sin.

Now she and her husband can raise their family in relative peace and stability. The Palins will be much happier now. But there is no joy in the fact that the left succeeded in running her off.

Sarah is gone now, yet upon reflection I don’t believe she is gone from our national life forever.

Prediction: In 2013, or 2017, Sarah Palin will become President Bobby Jindal’s secretary of the interior.