Attorney General Rob McKenna visited yesterday to plug his latest cause, preventing prescription drug abuse and overdoses. He cited some pretty interesting statistics:

• Prescription drug overdoses are killing far more people in Washington state than heroin, cocaine and meth combined.

• Methadone is the biggest culprit, followed by Oxycodone and Hydrocodone (the opiate in Vicodin).

• In 2005-06, Washington ranked 6th in the nation for the percentage of people 12 and older who misused prescription pain relievers.

• The state's medical director says that the increased daily doses being prescribed by doctors are not associated with improved outcomes and are most likely leading to increased tolerance, which can lead people to overdose.

McKenna's got several public education campaigns going, but is frustrated by the Drug Enforcement Agency's insistence that pharmacies can't accept narcotics and other controlled substances back from patients who didn't use their entire prescription. (The old advice – to flush the pills – no longer applies; pharmaceuticals are beginning to pollute the water supply).

The federal policy makes no sense. We trust pharmacists enough to dispense narcotics – why can't they also accept returns? Up in Clallam County, the sheriff has found a way around the rule by deputizing pharmacists.

Give him credit: Judge Michael Morgan of Federal Way stopped by here for an endorsement interview Wednesday despite a year and a half of receiving less-than-flattering coverage in The News Tribune (and criticism from this page).

Facing five challengers in the Aug. 18 primary, Morgan offered a vigorous defense of his first term in the city’s municipal court.

He created some of his own troubles with intemperate dealings with court staff and other city employees. He was reprimanded on one occasion by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, and he wound up in a long-running battle with this newspapers over a report on his court he didn’t want released. But – as he pointed out – no one’s been questioning his performance in the courtroom.

Being under fire for so long, he said, resulted in “the worst year and a half of my life.”

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The editorial board took a field trip to the Foss Waterway Seaport today. If you haven't been, the maritime museum is impressive. The vast timbered interior is unlike any warehouse I've seen. It's the last remnant of what boosters call the birthplace of the Port of Tacoma, a mile-long string of warehouses built by the Northern Pacific Railroad to store Washington wheat.

The Dock Street building survived only through what executive director Tom Cashman calls "accidental bureaucratic wisdom." Thirty years ago, Tacoma police needed a place to store impounded vehicles. The city gave the cops the Balfour Dock building, but warned them it was leaky. The police department slapped a new roof om the building, saving it from suffering a fate similar to the Municipal Dock Building whose demolition was decreed in 2001.

A major $7 million overhaul of the wharf in 2007 saved the Balfour building from slipping into the Foss Waterway. Now officials on planning on further improvements to shore up the 45,000-square-foot building and make it usable year-round by more groups. They need to make seismic upgrades, replace the roof, put in heating and do some interior renovation.

They're hoping that the City of Tacoma will contribute to the restoration since it owns the building. So far, the state has been the biggest government contributor, ponying up $3 million. But public and private donors alike are starting to look askance at a project in which the owner has not yet contributed.

It might be a hard sell this year – the city is facing potential budget shortfalls. But it's easy to get excited about what might be after hearing the Seaport guys talk.

UW President Mark Emmert was in today, and I've never seen him so close to anger.

He's royally upset by the budgets proposed this week by the state Senate and House of Representatives. They would devastate higher education in Washington, reducing enrollments by at least 10,000 seats.

Emmert wasn't demanding a bigger share of the state budget; he did push for the authority to raise tuition by 14 percent. For middle-income families, this would be more than offset by expanded federal financial aid now in the pipeline. Low income families are already effectively exempt from tuition under the Husky Promise program.

Some highlights of the visit:

• "More students want to go to college than at any time in our history."

• Washington is more dependent on engineers, scientists and other tech specialists than any other state, "and we're the state that has beat the hell out of higher education."

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It's not every day that a three-star general comes to visit with the editorial board. Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., who commands both Fort Lewis and I Corps, dropped by Tuesday with the fort's garrison commander, Col. Cindy Murphy. She handles the post's day-to-day operations and is playing a major role in the upcoming merger of Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base into Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Jacoby said he wanted to touch bases with the ed board before he leaves Sunday for I Corps' one-year deployment to Iraq, where it will be managing U.S. combat operations. The fort has been in the news recently – and not in a good way – and he wanted the chance to talk about it.

He said the South Sound community should know that fort officials take very seriously the drug overdose death last month of 16-year-old Leah King in a barracks.

"It hit us all very hard," said Jacoby. "Tens of thousands of soldiers serve honorably, and the community can trust them. A small minority dishonors themselves and their comrades.

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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.

I forgot to mention that UW President Mark Emmert was in yesterday. No, not to talk about football.

He spent much of the time arguing for sliding scale tuition rates – i.e., families that make more money pay more money to put their children through the UW.

But ... we did get around to football, by way of him not liking our editorial suggesting that Qwest Field could sub for Husky Stadium. The context was the UW's effort to use King County tourism taxes to overhaul the 88-year-old structure.

The UW stadium, Emmert pointed out, is as historic a historic landmark as there is in this state. "It would be easier to take down the Space Needle than Husky Stadium," he said.

And if you're not going to take it down, why not fix it up and use it?

High point of my day:

Krist Novoselic, Nirvana's bass guitarist (currently playing with Flipper), came by to talk about voting systems.

Afterwards, he got to talking about how he was toying around with Guitar Hero at a store display.

"I couldn't keep up," he said. A young wannabe was trying his hand at the game, too. "This kid smoked me," Novoselic said.

"And it was a Nirvana song."

Joe Biden works the Cheney Stadium crowd in this Associated Press photo.

Finally made it back from the Joe Biden rally at Cheney Stadium. It was a last-minute decision to go, so I didn't try to finagle a press pass. Instead, I sat up in the cheap seats with the riff raff (aka, my relatives).

While the TNT political writers were down on the infield in the sun, those of up in the stands were in the shade – and cold. "At least it isn't raining," chirped one glass-half-full type.

I heard that attendance was about 12,000 – which is more than twice any previous count at a Biden rally. I stood in a long line of folks waiting to get in (the only local candidate I saw working the line was county executive hopeful Calvin Goings).

In line we were told we needed to fill out a coupon with our contact information and then tear off a ticket in order to get in. The coupons were collected, but no tickets were ever taken at the gate. Seemed like a kind of sneaky way to build up the contact list. Whatever. I just wrote down a bunch of nonsense anyway.

Some impressions:

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U.S. Reps. Adam Smith of the 9th District and Dave Reichert of the 8th District stopped by today, fresh from yesterday's momentous House defeat on the $700 billion economic rescue plan.

Smith was a yea vote; Reichert a nay.

Smith said the bill was tainted the moment it got packaged as a "Wall Street bailout."

"This is not a Wall Street bailout," he said. "It's a bailout of our credit system."

Smith said his office was deluged with protests against the bill: "For every 500 calls we got against it, we got one in favor."

On that point, Reichert agreed. His office got about 2,500 emails and calls on the issue, he said, and the sentiment was "overwhelmingly no."

=> Read more!

Yesterday Pat O'Callahan blogged about Calvin Goings' candidate interview. What I found most interesting (besides, of course, Goings' six-point "Plan for Progress"), was that he said he'd lost almost 30 pounds doorbelling.

"I figure it's about 1 pound per 1,000 homes doorbelled," he said.

Who needs Jenny Craig? Just run for office and doorbell 30,000 homes!

Candidates aren't in the habit of publicly confessing their sins before an election. Some, in fact, take non-confession to extremes.

Pierce County Councilman Calvin Goings was in today to talk about his run for Pierce County executive. In the course of an impressive interview, he mentioned he had "challenges" as well as strengths ("challenges," not weaknesses, mind you).

We asked him what some of those "challenges" are. His responses:

• "My fault is maybe being too honest at times."

• "I have a vision."

• "I don't take no for an answer very well."

• "I expect a lot out of myself."

OK, I guess we can't expect a guy running for office to say:

• "I'm a pushover for anybody."

• "I expect very little out of myself, really."

• "Would someone tell me what this 'vision thing' is all about?"

• "I'm a prevaricating scoundrel. Do you believe me?"