– Happy Bus Driver Appreciation Day

– Boo CNN

– I don’t even know what to say about this case, it’s so terrible. I will say about the article, that it should be consistent about using the word “rape” instead of “sex abuse” and “have sex” some of the time, and if you look at the URL, it clearly was in the title at some point, so the decision to soft pedal it happened at some point.

– Oh CPAC, you’re terrible.

– Freedom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (not for ladies)

– Why does Bill Gates hate capitalism?

– Conservative Mystery Date

Booth Gardner has died.

Gardner died Friday at his Tacoma home, family spokesman Ron Dotzauer said Saturday. He was the state’s 19th governor.

“We’re very sad to lose my father, who had been struggling with a difficult disease for many years, but we are relieved to know that he’s at rest now and his fight is done,” said Gail Gant, Gardner’s daughter, in a statement.

The millionaire heir to the Weyerhaeuser timber fortune led the state from 1985 to 1993 following terms as Pierce County executive, state senator and business school dean.

Since then, he had worked as a U.S. trade ambassador in Geneva, in youth sports and for a variety of philanthropic works. But his biggest political effort in his later years was his successful “Death with Dignity” campaign in 2008 that ultimately led to the passage of the controversial law that mirrored a law that had been in place in Oregon since 1997.

The law allows terminally ill adults with six months or less left to live to request a legal dose of medication from their doctors.

Gardner knew that he wouldn’t qualify to use the law because Parkinson’s disease, while incurable, is not fatal. But at the time, he said his worsening condition made him an advocate for those who want control over how they die.

“It’s amazing to me how much this can help people get peace of mind,” Gardner told The Associated Press at the time. “There’s more people who would like to have control over their final days than those who don’t.”

Since Shaun is out for a while, I’ma steal his schtick.

Maryland is set to abolish its death penalty.

Maryland is set to become the 18th state in the nation to ban the death penalty. A week after the state Senate approved legislation repealing capital punishment and replacing it with life in prison without parole, the House of Delegates passed the bill Friday by a vote of 82-56.

The news serves as a victory for Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has been trying to repeal the state’s death penalty for years. He urged the passage of a bill to abolish the death penalty back in 2009, but the measure ultimately failed.

“Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent, it cannot be administered without racial bias, and it costs three times as much as life in prison without parole. What’s more, there is no way to reverse a mistake if an innocent person is put to death,” O’Malley said in a statement Friday.

Maryland becomes the sixth state in six years to put an end to the death penalty, after New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, and Connecticut.

Washington should make it 7.

The Washington State version of the DREAM Act passed by a large margin in the state House on Wednesday.

The House approved the so-called “Washington Dream Act” on a bipartisan 77-20 vote. They amended the bill on the floor to open college aid to all young illegal immigrants.

The bill’s previous version made only young immigrants who had qualified for the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program eligible for the State Needs Grant. That federal program provides young immigrants who arrived in the United States as children a legal way to live in the country on renewable two-year stays, if they meet certain age and non-criminal history criteria.

I’m not happy with the phrase “illegal immigrants” especially for young people. But I’m glad that this has passed with bipartisan support. Hopefully the lopsided nature of the vote and the number of Republicans supporting it means that it has a shot in the Senate.

I realize we’re like 400 steps away from a hockey team in Seattle, and that a lot of people are upset by the possibility of a stadium. But I enjoyed the conversation about a possible name in this post and the comments. I like the Metropolitans. It evokes a history and I’d get to root for 2 teams named the Mets.*

A good team name is mostly subjective, of course. I like ones that have a connection to the area, and that are plural (sorry Storm). Beyond that, rolling off the tongue probably helps. So what would you name a hockey team if they came to the area?

[Read more…]

I currently live within walking distance of the Space Needle. I’d say that among random people who ask for directions to things in town it’s either first or second.* And I understand that a lot of locals also like it.

I’m not here to judge, but everybody is wrong when they say they want to keep the views of it. I mean honestly, it’s not that attractive of a building, and the roof is usually painted a strange color. It doesn’t have much utility, and the location smack dab in the middle of a park is strange.

Now I’m not going to go so far as Guy de Maupassant eating at the Eiffel Tower to get away from looking at it. I get that it’s a thing that makes Seattle Seattle. It’s funky and unique. It’s a part of New Year’s and of the civic things that happen at Seattle Center.

But if it wasn’t there, other buildings would do that for us. I personally love the old pictures of Seattle where the Smith Tower dominates the sky line. And occasionally you see even older pictures with Saint James’s spires tucked away in the background, that I’m sure you could see from much of the city where you can’t see it any more.

So maybe what we need isn’t lots of places to see the Space Needle, but more buildings that will inspire awe. If we get buildings that block the Space Needle with their radness, that would probably be better than blocking the view with another box that could be switched with any high rise downtown without people noticing.

[Read more…]

– We’ve got ourselves a new Pope whose archdiocese did some terrible shit (h/t). But the horror in Argentina did lead to my favorite short story (I could only find a Spanish version online, and I’ve only ever read it in translation since I don’t speak Spanish).

– It turns out repealing the sick leave portions of the sick leave/safe leave law will also hurt actual people.

– The Bellevue Gap.

– Rape Is Not Inevitable

– The cowardly legislature refuses to enact background checks for firearms.

– The ethereal form of Judge Scalia

[This post talks about the law related to rape, stalking, and domestic violence]

I was thinking about the Senate voting to repeal the Seattle Sick Leave/ Safe Leave law in many cases when I read this piece from Cienna Madrid on Tom sending the Reproductive Parity Act to die in committee.

You see, as Senate Majority Leader (a position he also attained with his weasely prowess), Tom is responsible for assigning bills to the appropriate Senate committees. And instead of assigning the Reproductive Parity Act to the Senate’s Financial Institutions, Housing & Insurance committee where it was promised a fair hearing and vote from the committee’s Democratic chair, Tom instead sent the bill to the Senate’s Healthcare Committee, headed by anti-choice Sen. Randi Becker (R-Eatonville).

Yeah, that’s pretty terrible. It would have been an important law to have, and would have been a step in the direction of fairness in Washington. It’s one the reproductive justice community has rightly been fighting for for years. It also would have been important to say Washington affirms that abortion is a right. But we all pretty much knew this was going to happen when they said that social issues weren’t going to be the focus of this session. So while it’s awful, it isn’t actually moving back any laws, and Tom would argue that he still supports the law and whatever other excuse.

No, for Rodney Tom’s moving us backwards on safety and decency for women, you have to look at the Sick Leave/ Safe Leave law. Specifically the safe leave portion. You see when a woman who works in Seattle is stalked, or raped or beaten by her spouse, she can take safe time off. In the rest of the state, there aren’t as many protections.**

Rodney Tom looked at the difference between Seattle and the rest of the state and decided that the problem was Seattle. He co-sponsored SB 5728 to preempt that for the whole state, and ESB 5726 to make it only apply to Seattle based employers. The later passed, and the former might still.

I know the point of these laws is just to fuck with Seattle, but I wish the people passing them would give some consideration to the people actually hurt by them. I emailed Rodney Tom to ask him what he might say to a woman in his district who worked in Seattle and didn’t have the protections if she needed them if the law passed. So far he hasn’t responded.

[Read more…]

The other night, I was a bit early for an event in Queen Anne. I walked passed Mercer where Easy Street Records used to be for the first time since it closed. A half demolished building with no signs that it used to be a a hip music store stood exposed to the elements and fenced off. It’s rather sad.

Don’t get me wrong: the Internet is objectively a better place to get music than a record store. It has a wider selection and your MP3’s don’t scratch.

Still, the thing of it is when you’re 20 minutes early to an event, the greatest way in the world to kill that time is to find a local record shop and fart around. Sometimes you buy something and sometimes you don’t. The next best place of that sort is a book store, and those are experiencing the same sort of existential problem.

I don’t know what in the Internet era replaces that for places to hang out on a rainy Seattle day with some time to kill. Coffee shops are fine, but you really have to buy something, and maybe you don’t want something to eat or drink.

– I support the rights of police to collectively bargain. But this is a pretty shit reason to sue.

– Cut cut cut cut. NOT ME!

– It’s hard to get a full sense of it from a Twitter conversation, but predictive policing seems to be a positive idea.

– The full state senate repeals Seattle’s sick leave/safe leave law.

– Good news everybody! Scott Brown landed on his feet.

– The right is its own best argument against taking anyone in the movement seriously on matters of national security.

For serious, when the Spokane police need to put this warning up, it’s probably bad news.

Due to the recent high volume of citizens applying for concealed weapons permits, the average wait time for applicants is currently 2 – 3 hours. Customers visiting Police Records for other transactions may also experience higher-than-normal wait times. In order to serve customers within our hours of operation, any concealed weapons permit applicants arriving after 1:00pm may be asked to return on a different day to complete their transaction. Thank you for your understanding, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Or just don’t get a gun. Don’t get yourself a concealed weapons permit. Just, you know, it’s fine if you don’t have a gun. Getting a concealed weapons permit isn’t a reasonable response to Sandy Hook. It isn’t a reasonable response to moderate gun control measures proposed in the state, but that won’t go anywhere, or at the Federal level that might get a bit of traction.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that anyone trying to get a gun now is hoping to get in under the wire before the background checks.

– RIP Richard McIver.

– Telling women to get a gun is not rape prevention

– Can we close the gun show loophole please?

– David Brooks was wrong, wrong wrong on Iraq. Good thing they gave him the New York Times slot.

– Chihuly Broken Promises

– You Suck at Constitutionality Tim Eyman!

I know this is a few days old, but I want to applaud Seattle for considering allowing more emergency credit before it shuts off water.

The Seattle City Council is now considering legislation that would give a second emergency credit of up to $340 per year for any family registered in its low-income Utility Discount Program with children in the home. Currently, only one credit is available annually per household.

Seattle Public Utilities said it shut off water to 138 households in 2012 that were part of its low-income program. Of those, 68 had children under 18 years old.

Councilmember Jean Godden, who is sponsoring the legislation, said providing a second credit to those 68 families would cost the city about $20,000 a year. She called that a small subsidy in the context of the utilities’ nearly billion-dollar annual budget.

The article goes on to say that number is probably low because some people don’t know they qualify for the program. When people and families fall behind it’s unfortunate. And I’m glad in a relatively wealthy city like Seattle we’re figuring out how to make this situation a little less awful.

There was a shooting at the Parks Department. It looks like the police have the suspect in custody, but this is scary stuff.

Officers responding to a report of shots fired in a building near N. 80th and Densmore Avenue N. found a man with gunshot wound to the chest just around 2:15 p.m. Medics transported the man to a hospital; he was last listed in critical but stable condition.

Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation spokesperson Dewey Potter identified the victim as Bill Keller, 65, the executive director of the Associated Recreation Council, and the suspect as Carolyn Piksa, 46, a current Seattle Parks and Recreation employee. Piksa is described as a white female wearing a blue stocking cap and a beige or green camoflage jacket.

Since the shooter had the keys to all of the community centers, the kids who were going there after school have been rerouted back to their schools.

Meanwhile, Seattle police have asked several schools in the area of N. 130th and Linden Avenue N to be placed in lockdown as a precaution. The following schools are currently in “shelter in place,” which means exterior doors are locked, but classes are being conducted inside: Broadview Thomson Elementary K-8, Bagley Elementary and Wilson Alternative School.

As a result of the community center closures, Seattle Public Schools released the following statement about students en route to after-school programs at the centers:

Due to the City of Seattle’s closure of all community centers citywide, Seattle Public Schools is returning all students who were on buses bound for after-school programs to their schools of origin. In some cases, students were delivered to community centers before the closure announcement was made. In that case, the community centers are calling parents and asking them to pick up their students. Students returned to their school will remain at school with adult supervision until their parents can arrange for pick up.

I can’t imagine what any of those parents have been going through. Hopefully any parents reading this have found your kids.

The state house passed the Washington Voting Rights Act (second section). If passed it would allow minority groups that could prove discrimination at the local level some relief. The example in the piece, that’s the most common example I’ve heard relating to the act is Yakima:

His bill would give minority communities that can prove they’ve been disenfranchised at the polls (say, in Yakima, whose at-large city council lacks a single Latino member despite the city’s large Latino population) to move to districted elections.

Great. Now we can look forward to it dying in the state senate.