Via e-mail exchanges, here's the evolution of the Chris Britt cartoon above honoring the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. A black-and-white version will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Chris, who used to cartoon for us, is now at the State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill. We subscribe to his syndicated cartoons, and he often sends them to me earlier than he sends them to the syndicate, especially on breaking topics.

CHRIS, 9:03 a.m.: I'll have a Kennedy cartoon to you very soon.

ME, 9:06 a.m.: Tasteful, I hope. No sinking VWs (which I expect to get from Ramirez*).

CHRIS, 9:07 a.m.: Very much so. I'm going to have Teddy sailing off in his sailboat. The boat will be labeled "The Lion." Above the visual will be a Teddy quote.

I considered having his brothers and sisters waiting for him in heaven, but there will be loads of those.

Yes, Ramirez will do something like that.

ME, 9:11 a.m.: I think your first instinct is best. Some of the most powerful obit cartoons are very simple.

CHRIS, 9:13 a.m.: OK. That is what I think too. I'll send it to you after lunch. Thanks for the feedback.

I could have Teddy crashing into the pearly gates in his car? (kidding)

* Cartoonist Michael Ramirez, who is likely to come up with a Kennedy cartoon that is, shall we say, less than complimentary.

Bob raises a valid question about our editorial on the allegation that Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Michael Morgan assumed a clerk's online identity to post disparaging comments about his opponents.

Why can't “Christine Faucher” be lying? Just because she asked city officials to investigate doesn't mean she is in the clear. She probably realizes that unless they have a camera pointed at the computer it is impossible to tell who logged on at a specific time. Nothing like throwing out a red herring for the hound dogs to follow...

Anything's possible, but what Bob suggests would be a rather twisted plot. Faucher gets a hold of Morgan's password somehow, sneaks into Morgan's office when he's away, logs in as him, then logs back out, logs back in under the general user account, posts the comments under her name, then cries foul to city officials.

If Faucher had been looking to implicate Morgan, wouldn't she have made the comments while logged into Morgan's account? Or maybe she didn't have his password, but dashed into his office while he was away and logged into the general user account to post the comment?

That would have been quite daring on her part since the city's Internet log shows Morgan would have been away from his computer for only a few minutes. What's more, Faucher (or whoever this imposter was) would have had to sneak into Morgan's office three separate times on Aug. 3 to post two comments to the Federal Way Mirror site and submit a registration for The News Tribune site.

I recommend reading the city's timeline of events, which also offers this interesting tidbit: Someone logged into Michael Morgan's computer as Michael Morgan at 7:18 p.m. on Aug. 3 to look up RCW 42.17.130. The title of that statute? "Use of public office or agency facilities in campaigns."

This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Federal Way’s Municipal Court is afflicted with more cases of the he-said, she-saids than a nasty divorce.

The latest: Police say they have reason to suspect Judge Michael Morgan assumed the identity of an employee to post online comments critical of two election opponents.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

When an offender is released from a state prison and doesn’t settle down in Pierce County, there’s a decent chance Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Gerry Horne deserves credit.

Horne, who leaves office Monday after 27 years in the department and nine years in its top job, forged a reputation for seeking justice – for crime victims as well as for the public he served.

He was an early and fierce champion for the concept of “fair share.” After establishing that Pierce County was the state Department of Correction’s favorite dumping ground for released offenders, he worked tirelessly to get legislators on board with the idea that other counties should take back their own offenders.

That’s happening now, thanks to legislation passed in 2007, and Pierce County will be a safer place because of it. Today, an estimated 150 to 200 offenders are not being released to Pierce County each year who in earlier years would have been.

=> Read more!

After posting an editorial last week defending the carbon benefits of four dams some people want removed from the lower Snake River, I found this quaintly worded message in my email:

I'm curious to know where you got the figure that 20% of Washington State's electrical power comes from coal. I looked it up and every source I found has Washington getting around 8% of its energy from coal.

And could we please stop with the stupid straw men.... "Many opponents of the dams brush off the carbon problem." Just who are these many opponents? A few minutes of work with The Google turned up information addressing replacement power for the dams.

There's enough stuff going on in the world to worry about, you don't need to make shit up.

'Oh and you might want to check this website out: http://www.google.com/

It might come in handy when writing future editorials.

The writer, to his credit, signed his name. I was fascinated by the anger; I guess some people really really hate those dams and anyone who speaks up for them. My response:

I get much of my power-data information from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Try this link:

http://www.nwcouncil.org/maps/power/overview.htm

Here's the exact quote:

"About 20 percent of the region’s electricity comes from plants that burn coal, and about 21 percent comes from plants that burn natural gas."

I find it curious that you would call me a liar for using a number you thought I had gotten wrong. I wouldn't call you a liar for citing the 8 percent number. I would assume you'd made an honest mistake.

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Allegations that Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Michael Morgan assumed the online identity of one of his clerks are serious and can’t wait until after the election to be sorted out.

Retiring prosecutor Gerry Horne did well by Pierce County, most notably by getting the state to finally quit contributing to the crime rate by dumping ex-cons here.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

Washington state has recycling or take-back programs for old computers, old motor oil and old tires. But people with a few extra Vicodin are out of luck.

That’s absurd and has to change. Too many children and teenagers are raiding their parents’ medicine cabinet with dire consequences. Too many drug addicts are turning to prescription drugs for their fix.

The state’s unintentional poisonings have soared nearly 400 percent in recent years – and prescription drugs are the biggest culprit. In King County last year, deaths from prescription drugs surpassed illegal drugs as the leading cause of drug-related deaths.

Those numbers reflect the growing abuse of prescription medications. The Office of National Drug Control Policy found that in 2006, abuse of prescription pain killers ranked second – behind only marijuana – as the nation’s most prevalent illegal drug problem.

=> Read more!