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 Tuesday's print edition.
It’s hard to make a rule against stopping just short of breaking the rules. The attitude is offensive, but it’s not an offense.
So maybe no rule can guarantee that what happened to Taylor Mack on Fort Lewis two years ago won’t happen again.
Mack, then a 20-year-old Lacey woman, woke up in a barracks room to discover her face had been beaten to a pulp. Her jaw, nose and an eye socket had been broken. A tooth had been knocked out, and she’d suffered a concussion.
The admitted perpetrator was a newly discharged soldier, Andre John Roberts, 26. According to Mack, she’d been rebuffing Roberts’ advances. She wound up in the room alone with him the night of June 19, 2007, and woke up looking worse than a mauled prizefighter.
What happened then – as reported Sunday by The News Tribune’s Sean Robinson – was an exercise in evading responsibility.
This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.
The Martin Luther King Housing Development Association is in such sorry shape that it can’t afford to assess its own sorriness.
The nonprofit agency is asking the City of Tacoma for $6,000 to hire an accountant to sort out its books following the departure of its two top administrators. And that’s chump change compared to what it appears it will take to bail out the financially distressed agency.
Association executive director Felix Flannigan and chief financial officer Val Tiller were fired last month for what the board president describes as a combination of unauthorized financial transactions and a lack of financial controls and oversight.
Flannigan might take the fall – and perhaps he deserves it – but association board members also ought to account for why they didn’t intervene sooner.
I am old enough to remember when the nation learned of the My Lai massacre in 1969.
The fact that U.S. troops had killed so many women, children and elderly Vietnamese was shocking enough. What shocked me more was the response of many Americans, who ferociously defended the massacre. Some of them vilified several soldiers who’d tried to shield the civilians.
The officer on the scene, Lt. William Calley, wound up convicted of multiple counts of premeditated murder. Many believe he was scapegoated by higher-ups. In any case, his conviction again triggered public outrage that anyone would dare second-guess anything U.S. soldiers did in a combat zone.
As it turns out, Calley has done plenty of his own second-guessing over the years. See this account of his remarks at a Kiwanis meeting last Wednesday. Excerpt:
There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.
The Martin Luther King Housing Development Association’s financial crisis doesn’t speak well of either its former executive director Felix Flannigan or the agency's board. Why did it take the board this long to act? Something needs to be done to preserve the association’s affordable housing, but any kind of public bailout should be conditioned on new leadership.
Fort Lewis authorities seriously mishandled the case of a woman whose face was beaten to a pulp by a newly discharged soldier.
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.
An epiphany occurred during a recent oil change and with the help of my auto mechanic I think I may finally have a grasp on the health care crisis.
“While we were under the van we saw something”
“Saw something?” I say to Bill. The name Bill was embroidered on his shirt above the oil smudge.
He clears his throat. “Transmission fluid.”
“Transmission fluid?” I echo back. My faltering voice confirms Bill’s suspicion: This lady don’t know nothin’ about cars.
“Is it fatal?” I ask, knowing my ten-year-old van has already lived past its 200k-mile expiration date, plus it already survived one transmission transplant, could it survive another?
