Now that Obama supports gay marriage, it will presumably be much easier to get a marriage equality plank into the platform. Still, I haven’t seen him support plank in the national platform (I haven’t seen one way or the other, but I’ve only done a cursory Google search). So hopefully he lends his support to it, and it’s not a fight. But for now, I’m still going to push people who support that plank at the next levels.

I generally think it makes sense for Joni Balter to move to news. But the highlighted bit is strange.

In an email, Balter told PubliCola that her new title will be assistant political editor. “I have long wanted to try some editing,” Balter says. “I am taking the lead on the Politics Northwest blog, trying to give it a bigger presence on the site and make it a must read.”

More political reporting on the Politics Northwest blog sounds good. The best model would be Postman, but The Tacoma News Tribune’s political blog is pretty good, and has had more longevity than Postman. I hope she can pull it off, and as I’ve said, all in all, Balter moving to news is probably the right move for the paper, and hopefully for her.

Still, does Joni Balter not realize she has access to a blog now? She could have made some effort to make the Ed Cetera blog a must read. I’m sure the paper would have loved her to break some stories on that blog, instead of doing nothing with it for a while, and then giving it to an intern. And it seems that a breaking news blog would be more work than an opinion blog. Maybe it’s more different than I realize, but if the past is prologue, it’s not a good sign.

– Mother’s Day (week) actions for Macy’s workers.

– You probably wouldn’t want your dog off leash in this dog park.

– Oh, it looks like there’s a mayor’s race in Portland

– I’m glad the Obama administration is putting out feelers (h/t) on marriage equality, but it’s time to just make it happen.

– Here’s hoping Neil Sinhababu’s take on the Greek elections is right.

– How much latitude should artists have when copying photographs?

I haven’t been making fun of The Seattle Times’ Ed Cetera blog recently. And point of fact, their intern is doing a pretty good job providing content.

But fortunately, there’s still their occasional nonsense where Bruce Ramsey and Lynne Varner argue usually over some detail on a non-issue where they start out meeting each other 90% of the way. Surprisingly, this time they actually talked about a real issue: The police response to the May Day vandalism. Bruce Ramsey starts it off thus: “I’m big on individual rights, but here is where I draw a line.”

Sure. We all have our lines. So it’s fair to say where they are. But I feel like Bruce Ramsey is regularly saying where we should curtail our individual rights and saying he usually supports individual rights as opposed to this time. But it seems to me, he could focus more on the rights he wants to expand.

Now, I’m sure he can link to pieces about lower taxes and claim that’s an individual’s right to not pay whatever tax the column is about. But that’s not the same. I’m sure he can link to pieces where he talks about property rights, and that’s closer but still not the same; the main regulations are downstream problems and other externalities, and anyway, a lot of people don’t own property. I’m sure he can link to pieces where he has defended corporate rights when they’ve been unpopular, but that’s not anything like individual rights.

Look, I know there are drug war things where he’s been fine. But it seems he cares less about individual rights than the average liberal. But he talks about how he’s for individual rights more than just about anyone. And you’d think someone like that would go out of their way to write about the individual rights they want to expand more.

– May Day

– A road to disaster for Europe.

-Darryl linked to people who made fun of The Heartland Institute’s godawful billboards in the Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza, but here’s another link making fun of it, now mostly with the written word.

– I don’t know if other people were aware of We are the 1 in 3, but I just came across it (h/t).

– The French elected a new President.

– Cape Disappointment and Useless Bay make this list of most depressing place names.

Dwight Pelz has pulled his support for the the marriage equality plank of the federal platform. He claims the problem is that this is an effort to embarrass Obama.

“I was unhappy to see them throw up some press release out there making it like this insurrection within the party,” Pelz says. “I wasn’t happy with them using my name,” he says, explaining that he didn’t like their tactics. “I didn’t realize it was part of a strategy to start a fight within the party and embarrass the President.”

“Frankly, I felt sandbagged.”

I appreciate that Pelz wants to support President Obama more than he cares about any particular plank in the platform. But if Obama can’t support a marriage equality plank, he deserves to be embarrassed. He’s on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of basic human decency.*

Furthermore, the Washington State Democratic platform will support marriage equality because most Washington State Democrats support marriage equality. Most of the caucus in the last session of the legislature supported marriage equality. We need a chair who will support for those values at the national level. I realize that party activists have the freedom to get ahead of elected officials on these sorts of issues, I just hope Pelz remembers that he’s an activist, not an elected official, now.

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I hate to be cynical about this piece in The Columbian. Yes, kids should learn math. There is interesting stuff there. It opens up worlds later on. I wish I had studied harder as a kid. But math and science will never be cool.

In Our View: Science & Math Are Cool

In my view: Cool? I hope there’s some evidence to back that up instead of a HEYKIDS!!!!!! type intro.

Many middle-school students fear science and math as much as cooties and wedgies. Neither subject is ranked on their cool-things-at-school list. And later, in high school, those preconceived notions improperly guide their course selections and career choices.However, those stereotypes are fading, thanks in part to Washington STEM, a nonprofit that is celebrating its first anniversary this week. For the purpose of this editorial, the key letters in the STEM acronym are the first and the last. “Science” and “math” form the foundation — especially in middle school — for meaningful high-school diplomas, attractive résumés for college applicants and, ultimately, lucrative careers. First, though, we have to convince kids to stop hating on science and math.

Cooties? Are middle schoolers 6? For goodness sake. Look, kids should learn hard sciences. They should learn them for the somewhat important things in the paragraph, and more importantly they should also learn them for their own sake. But teachers, journalists, and other authority figures are never going to be cool. They should recognize that, and focus on why these programs actually matter.

And the rest of the article is praise for the program mostly couched, bizarrely as this sounds, as statements of praise for the program as the program. I don’t know enough about it, but I’m happy to spend money on the hard sciences. But it’s a strange intro and last line.

So spread the word: Science and math are cool. Even journalists think so.

No, I’m going to spread the word that math and science are important, and you’ll be glad you took them. But sorry, they still aren’t cool.

I was going to mention this in this morning’s open thread, but there was no way to do it in a sentence without it sounding like I was goofing on Joni Balter (although, obviously, I have in the past and may again depending on what she writes). I think it’s absolutely the right move for Balter to leave the ed page and go back to news. I don’t have any recollection of her as a reporter, but people I know, even people who are skeptical of her as an editorial writer tell me she was good at it. So we’ll see based on what she writes. If it’s solid reporting, great. If it’s nonsense dressed up as reporting, well that’s too bad.

But regardless of how Balter turns out, The Seattle Times should focus more on reporting than on editorials. It’s their bread and butter and they don’t have as much competition. While some blogs that aren’t affiliated with newspapers have reporting, a good deal of the reporting in this town comes from The Seattle Times. I hope this signals something more than just one move.

Lisa Brown isn’t running for reelection (h/t).

I have decided not to seek re-election to the 3rd district Senate seat this fall. Returning home two weeks ago, I began taking stock of my twenty years in the Legislature, reflecting on what I have been able to achieve with the help of colleagues and supporters. I decided that, though it is still immensely gratifying to serve Spokane and the state of Washington in this capacity, I am ready for new challenges.

I don’t know why anyone would want to be a legislator in this climate, so I can’t blame her. But it is a loss.

– Politicizing national security

– The Squaxin Island Tribe released thousands of juvenile coho into the Deschutes River to see where they go. “In order to find out where the good coho habitat is in the Deschutes, we need to put some coho in the river,” said Scott Stetlzner, salmon biologist for the tribe.

– I decided to keep blogging here and to give myself permission to step away when I feel the need.

– How much of their own bullshit do right wingers believe?

– It gets tougher and tougher to watch football the more stuff like this happens.

– I said yesterday that I prefer the stadiums downtown. But if that’s found to be problematic for the Port, then Rainier Valley would be fine (h/t)

– You have terrible taste

– I don’t see anything going wrong with this plan.

For a variety of reasons I prefer having the stadiums in walking distance of downtown than I would having them further out. It’s great to be able to amble home after a game or take my bike back to my apartment without breaking a sweat. Still there’s something nice about riding the light rail when the team is in town.

While I wasn’t going to the Sounders game, I happened to be riding into town from Columbia City at 6:30. The train wasn’t jam packed, but the seats were taken and people were standing. People in Sounders gear talking to strangers about the game and the season. There’s a sense of community that you don’t get fighting traffic and trying to find parking.

This David Brooks piece is mostly just an excuse for him to make his hillllllllllarious plumber joke.* But then he realized that he only wrote enough to fill a third of the column and had to fill it with nonsense. I wasn’t going to mention it, but since it’s going around various other blogs, I thought I’d mention it too.

So far this year, both President Obama and Mitt Romney seem more passionate about denying the other side victory than about any plank in their own agendas. Both campaigns have developed contempt for their opponent, justifying their belief that everything, then, is permitted.

In both campaigns, you can see the war-room mentality developing early.

He gives one example of each campaign caring more about denying the other candidate victory than about their own agenda. See of you find the falseness in this equivalence:

In November, the Romney campaign ran a blatantly dishonest ad in which President Obama purportedly admits that if the election is fought on the economy, he will lose. The quote was a distortion, but the effectiveness of the ad was in showing Republican professionals and primary voters that Romney was going to play by gangland rules, that he was tough enough and dishonest enough to do so, too.

Last week, the Obama campaign ran a cheap-shot ad on the death of Osama bin Laden. Part of the ad was Bill Clinton effectively talking about the decision to kill the terrorist. But, in the middle, the Obama people threw in a low-minded attack on Romney. The slam made Clinton look small, it made Obama look small, it turned a moment of genuine accomplishment into a political ploy, but it did follow the rules of gangland: At every second, attack; at every opportunity, drive a shiv between the ribs.

Romney quoting Obama quoting McCain’s adviser 4 years ago, but passing it off as Obama saying it now on the one side. An Obama campaign video talking about the Bin Laden raid and noting that Romney wouldn’t have done it based on things he said in the campaign in context on the other. Really, if those are your extremes, let me suggest one side is worse than the other.

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Over at Sound Politics, that still exists, Ron Hebron is mad at Dan Savage for saying the part of the bible that says you should kill gay people is bullshit like the part that says you should stone non-virgin women on their wedding night.

Addressing a national conference of high-school journalists, Savage was calling the Bible bull**** repeatedly. Students started to leave. So he called them pansyasses. When the adult presenter calls 17-year-old students names isn’t that bullying?

He apologized for the pansyasses thing, as well he should. But he didn’t say the entire Bible was bullshit, just the bullshit parts. Also, why bowdlerize bullshit but not pansyass?

The Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association paid Savage to address the students. Didn’t they know what they were getting? We did.

Who the fuck is “we” here? Does Hebron think he’s the Queen of England? But the larger point is that people who use the Bible to justify hatred should be called out. And if the National Scholastic Press Association wants to have him say that, that’s fine. But even if you’re a Christian, it’s worth hearing.

– Occupy Seattle’s May Day schedule.

– I hadn’t heard of Startup Weekend GOV but the winners look like they’re creating some innovative things.

– Shaun and Erica have more on McMorris Rogers.

– Texas’ anti-Planned Parenthood law is unconstitutional.

– I’m not sure if it’s an honor or a dishonor that Twilight wasn’t filmed in Washington.

– Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Joe Cowley Rides A Plane, Degrades Women Everywhere

I’m not sure where my notes are, so this isn’t going to be a very good piece. I’m sorry.

Over the weekend the Democrats held their Legislative District and County Caucuses. Because I’m a glutton for punishment — and because I believe in the process, also um, for this post — I went to both of mine. It’s not nearly as noteworthy 4 years ago, when there was still a primary going on and the Clinton people were still trying to keep their delegates and the Obama people were trying to finish things off. But we got to make the platform a little more liberal than the proposals, so that’s good. Also, I’m a delegate to the Legislative District and State levels, so yay for that.

Day one was the legislative district. Shock of shocks: we were almost all for Obama. There were people who wanted to nominate Russ Feingold, Elizabeth Warren, Jim McDermott, and Max Cleland. At one person each, they fell well short of the 15% necessary to get a delegate to the next level (we had well over 100 people).

People were given a chance to reconsider their candidates, while we went on to the legislative district platform. We’re for marriage equality and against the war in Afghanistan.

Then picking delegates. The men and the women were picked separately, so there would be an equal number (23, I believe) of each. We gave 30 second speeches on why we should go on and what our issues are. There isn’t too much you can say in that time. I mentioned writing for this and previous blogs and that I grew up as a Democrat. I guess it was good enough, since I made it to the next rounds, although a majority of people did, so it’s not that much of an accomplishment.

Interspersed throughout the process were speeches. All of the candidates for the LD or their spokespeople. Jim McDermott came in fairly late (I think he said it was the 6th district he was at that day). He said he thinks health care is going to be upheld in the Supreme Court 6-3 and that a Democratic Congress and reelecting Obama will make sure the details work for regular people. He also thanked the person who nominated him for president, but said he wouldn’t accept it. He was the only standing ovation of the day. So that was Saturday.

Sunday, I went to the King County convention. No delegates were selected, just the platform. I mostly sat in the back with my father who was a delegate from another district. First off, there were quite a few speeches. Jay Inslee gave a barn burner. Jim McDermott gave basically the same speech (that he also gave at my Dad’s LD) minus thanking the person who nominated him for president. Darcy Burner had Marilyn Chase (whose district I don’t think overlaps the new 1st, but I’m not sure) speak on her behalf because she’d eaten seafood despite being allergic the night before, but I don’t remember anything about it. Ruderman and Suzan DelBene each gave I’m electable speeches. There are too many people running for judge.

The King County platform is pretty good. People had a tough time understanding there were only deletions and not amendments. I left about 5:30 (my ride was leaving), when we were about 2/3 of the way through the platform. I’m not sure it was the most productive weekend I’ve ever had, but I’m glad I went.