This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

First Amendment rights aren’t trivialities.

Washington’s political parties have legitimate concerns about the erosion of their constitutional right of association under the state’s new Top Two primary. State leaders should be addressing those concerns.

The unusual Top Two system – which simply advances the two leading candidates to the November election, regardless of party – was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. But the decision had caveats.

The court affirmed Top Two in principle but not necessarily in practice. The parties’ grievance with Washington primaries has been twofold: Outsiders are allowed to help choose their November candidates. And candidates are allowed to pose as Democrats, Republicans or whatever, whether the parties like it or not.

That’s “forced association,” which the judiciary has found unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Is it graffiti, or is it art? And can it be both?

The mural proposed by Urban Grace Church for the back of Tacoma’s Rialto Theater is striking,. The design incorporates elements of both street graffiti and Islamic mosaic pattern in a pleasingly aesthetic way that reflects the church’s commitment to religious diversity.

The mural is light years beyond what many people think of when they hear the word “graffiti” – the indiscriminate “tagging” by young vandals on buildings, fences and railroad cars. Even some of that can be artistic, but when it’s unwanted, it’s vandalism.

In the case of the Rialto mural, the graffiti is wanted. It would be paid for through a $3,000 grant from the City of Tacoma as part of neighborhood beautification efforts and created by Fab-5, a nonprofit organization that mentors young people through media that is relevant to them – such as hip-hop music and graffiti art.

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Blogger/author Diana West takes issue with all the plaudits for Ted Kennedy. She had a similarly jaundiced view upon the passing of newsman Walter Cronkite.

By Diana West

Something about the death of a famous liberal person turns the media into grieving widows whose dictum against speaking “ill” of the dead eliminates all sober analysis of the life in question.

Once, death in the passing parade came to us, more or less, in “just-the-facts, ma’am” obituaries. Now, breaking, live and for the duration, a celebratory loop plays on about even the most mixed and controversial public lives.

Notice I said “mixed” and “controversial,” restrained terminology to describe the life and times of Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose death triggered a media dump of Hallmark-curlicued tributes that all begin with “lion of the Senate” — as though that were his official title — and finish with “the end of Camelot,” as though that were his actual residence, not the tagline of an ancient PR campaign.

Question: How does the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne — whom the married, panicked and first-term Sen. Ted Kennedy left to drown in 7 feet of Chappaquiddick water — apply to the “lion” from “Camelot”?

Answer: It doesn’t.

Remember: Don’t speak ill of the dead. Kennedy fixture Ted Sorensen’s gloss in Time magazine is typical, depicting “the Chappaquiddick incident” as merely ending Kennedy’s “bright prospects for still higher office.”

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