I realize that most voters probably don't care about newspaper endorsements any longer. (If they ever did.)

But just in case you wanted a graphical representation of which papers are endorsing which candidate throughout the country, the folks at 10,000words.net have created an interactive map.

It shows the disembodied head of Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain over the city where a particular newspaper has endorsed Obama or McCain.

You can then click on the "head" to read the endorsement.

The creators said they are showing the top 100 newspapers based on circulation. It's not quite up to date, though. Over Seattle, there's only one Obama head -- for the Seattle P-I endorsement. The Seattle Times' Obama endorsement doesn't show up.

The TNT's Obama endorsement, published yesterday, doesn't show up, either.

(And yes, we are among the 100 biggest papers -- barely.)

UPDATE: TNT columnist Peter Callaghan writes in Sunday's paper that he is not a fan of newspaper endorsements.

Greg Mitchell, editor of the trade publication Editor & Publisher, takes issue with those who scoff at newspaper endorsements.

via 10,000words.net

I ran across an article in the October 2008 edition of Budget & Taxes News. They had someone called CCH Group compile information and put together a map that shows the state gas tax, sales tax and tobacco tax in each of the 50 states.

They say Washington is No. 1. Or, at least, was as of July 1, 2008. That's when the state gas tax went up by the final 1.5 cents of the 9.5-cent-a-gallon increase the Legislature approved in 2005.

I found some seemingly conflicting information. Budget and Taxes says we're No. 1 at 37.5 cents a gallon, but the Tax Foundation shows that Florida had a gas tax of 39 cents a gallon a full six months earlier, on Jan. 1.

I suspect the Tax Foundation was including some local jurisdiction taxes, whereas the Budget & Taxes chart looked only at statewide gas taxes.

UPDATE: WashDOT's Lloyd Brown sends along a June 2008 report that says we're No. 8. But it's as I suspected: The gas tax for other states includes local surcharges, too. We've had proposals to let counties levy a surcharge on the gas tax, but it hasn't happened yet.

Our WashDOT put out a report in December 2007 that said Washington was 7th in gas tax. That report said New York was 45.53 cents, California was 43.5 cents, Connecticut was 42.69 cents, Illinois was 41.56 cents, Hawaii was at 41.53 cents and Michigan was at 36.49 cents.

The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon.

Here's a link to the Tax Foundation, which compiled its information as of Jan. 1, 2008.

Darcy Burner’s campaign isn’t taking Rep. Dave Reichert’s attacks on her degree lying down.

After Reichert’s campaign raised havoc yesterday about Burner claiming she has a degree in economics, Burner’s campaign fired back this morning with a press release that says Reichert has been lying about having a four-year degree.

The Congressman earned a two-year Associate's Degree from Concordia Lutheran College, not the B.A. listed on the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress Web site.

But it looks like he hasn’t claimed to have a four-year degree anywhere else. He said his degree was an A.A. in the information he provided for The News Tribune’s election guide, and the biographies on his campaign Web site and his U.S. House Web site say only that he “graduated” from Concordia.

Reichert’s campaign spokeswoman, Amanda Halligan, said the B.A. reference on the Congress.gov site is just a mistake.

“This is obviously a distraction technique by the Burner campaign,” Halligan said. “This is the difference between a typo on a Web site that is not ours and a pattern of deception from Darcy Burner, who has consistently touted her ‘degree in economics from Harvard.’”

As I noted in a blog post yesterday, Burner’s degree is actually in computer science with a “special field” in economics, but she has failed to make that distinction on the campaign trail. Unlike Reichert, she's mentioned her degree numerous times at campaign events and debates, especially when talking about her ability to deal with today's problems in the economy.

The latest non-partisan SurveyUSA poll in the race between Rep. Dave Reichert and Democratic challenger Darcy Burner shows Burner ahead by 4 percentage points.

The poll, commissioned by KING 5 in Seattle, showed Burner leading Reichert 50 percent to 46 percent among 700 voters contacted earlier this week.

The last independent poll in the race for Washington’s 8th Congressional District was also a SurveyUSA poll, which showed Reichert leading Burner 54 percent to 44 percent in early September.

Burner’s campaign pollsters have been saying for weeks that she’s taken the lead, but have only been able to cite their internal polls and a poll by the partisan Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

See the detailed poll results here.

Pierce County Democrats have a new video encouraging voters to rank their party’s candidates first and second under the county’s new ranked choice voting system.

“Ranked choice voting. Do you know what to do? Vote one, two blue,” the narrator of the video says. You can watch it here.

Thanks to Kelly Haughton for pointing this out.