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During our several days of 80-plus degree heat last week, a single cherry tomato ripened. And nearly midway through July, that has been the extent of our tomato harvest thus far.

To be fair, the harvest generally doesn’t begin in earnest for another two to three weeks, but the ultra-early varieties I plant (Stupice, Sungold, and the Sweet Million above) usually produce a scattering of offerings by now. More disturbing, while the foliage is lush, very little fruit has set thus far; only three clusters between my two, always reliable Stupice plants, a couple clusters on the Sweet Million, and the first hint of fruit on the Sungold and Yellow Pear. My Ispolin, a Siberian beefsteak variety I’m experimenting with, has tons of flowers, but only a single, thumbnail-sized fruit.

Unless it’s hot and dry in August and September, this is shaping up to be a pretty crappy tomato year in Seattle. Depressing.

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Fox News personality Judge Andrew Napolitano on Bush and Cheney:

They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I’d like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you’re under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It’s a moral crime.

It’s not a coincidence that Fox News didn’t put people like Napolitano on TV give Napolitano his own show until after we had a Democrat inhabiting the White House.

UPDATE: A commenter pointed out that Napolitano was occasionally on Fox News in the past, but he didn’t have his own show until 2009. I’ve updated the original post accordingly.

UPDATE 2: In fact, Freedom Watch was created in February 2009 and began airing on Fox Business Channel in 2010. The timing was not a coincidence.

The Washington State Supreme Court announced today that it has granted review to Goldmark v. McKenna, Commissioner for Public Lands Peter Goldmark’s petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to compel Attorney General Rob McKenna fulfill his statutory duty to provide legal counsel.

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court has decided to take up my case with the Attorney General,” Goldmark said in an official statement. “It is a critical constitutional question of whether or not the Attorney General has the discretion to make policy for issues under the purview of another statewide elected official.”

This marks the second time in as many weeks that the Court has rejected McKenna’s claim of broad discretionary powers. Oral arguments are scheduled to be held November 18, the same day as those for Seattle v. McKenna, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes’ petition seeking to compel McKenna to withdraw from the lawsuit challenging health care reform.

In granting review of the two related cases, and scheduling to hear them on the same day, the Washington State Supreme Court apparently believes the constitutional issues raised by the Attorney General’s unprecedented claim of extra-statutory powers are a pretty big deal… but so far our local media disagrees. Huh.

Pete Guither responds to Roger Roffman’s concern-trolling of the drug law reform movement in the Seattle Times Mommy Advice Journal.

If you haven’t read it yet, you really need to take a gander at Dominic Holden’s in-depth spelunking of the deep-bore tunnel cost-overrun controversy in the current issue of The Stranger, in which a local journalist finally asks the rather obvious question: “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”

I know it’s all the fad these days amongst the Rainier Club crowd to roll one’s eyes at the mention of Mike McGinn’s name, all the while planning for Mayor Burgess’s election night victory party, but considering what’s at stake, it’s nice to know that there’s at least one elected official standing up for Seattle taxpayers (whatever his motives or sometimes clumsy methods). For at a time when the Seattle Center is preparing to auction off a couple acres of rare, designated open space to the highest bidder, in pursuit of a mere couple hundred thousand dollars of additional annual revenue, just imagine what a couple hundred million dollars in cost-overruns will do to our ability to pay for the things we want and need, let alone the billion-plus bill we could be presented with should things go seriously wrong.

And as Dominic explains, things could go seriously wrong.

Now I’m not one of those who points to Boston’s “Big Dig” and similar fiascos and concludes that America has somehow lost its ability to engineer and construct big projects. Large infrastructure projects do sometimes come in on time and near budget, and WSDOT has had a particularly good track record in recent years. But I’m no pollyanna either, especially when it comes to the least studied, least engineered, most speculative of any of the various Viaduct replacement alternatives.

In fact, when the Discovery Institute first floated the idea of what I immediately dubbed “The Big Bore,” I ridiculed their apparently faith-based proposal as “Intelligent Transportation Design.”

I once proposed building a gigantic rollercoaster along the West Seattle to downtown portion of the Monorail’s abandoned Green Line, and you didn’t see my joke of a transportation proposal picked up by the MSM, let alone labeled “visionary”. And yet the Seattle Rollercoaster Project is no less technically challenging nor politically, well, utterly fucking ridiculous than Discovery’s deep bore, crosstown tunnel. … In a city where completion of a 1.3 mile vanity trolley line is feted like some transportation miracle, the very notion that local voters might commit more than a half billion dollars a mile to an untested technology is a dramatic tribute to Discovery’s primary mission of promoting the exercise of faith over reason.

Much to my chagrin our political establishment quickly embraced Discovery’s Big Bore proposal, ignoring the technical challenges while attempting to bypass the political ones by excluding Seattle voters from the process… only to run into the electoral equivalent of a stuck tunnel-boring machine: the surprising election of Mayor Mike McGinn.

Like a stuck TBM, Mayor McGinn can’t possibly reverse himself, and with the cost-overrun issue still conveniently blocking his way, he sure as hell ain’t moving forward. Vindictive, short-sighted and/or lazy legislators may have thought they cleverly short-circuited our city’s famously obstructionist civic fetish with process, but where there’s a will, there’s a Seattle Way.

Observers who don’t believe last year’s mayoral election was at least in part a referendum on the Big Bore Tunnel are smoking crack. McGinn long and loudly campaigned on his opposition to the tunnel, and even when he relented during the final weeks, he still promised to fight any effort to stick Seattle taxpayers with open-ended cost-overruns. So why should anybody roll their eyes at the sight of Mayor McGinn attempting to fulfill his promise? The irony is, while the wise, old sages at the Seattle Times blame Mayor McGinn for the cost-overrun controversy, it’s actually the controversy that deserves the blame for Mayor McGinn.

As with the underlying technical challenges in drilling the largest diameter deep-bore tunnel ever, the powers that be have also failed to fully think through the financial and political challenges associated with the proposal. When I hear Governor Gregoire, City Council president Richard Conlin and other tunnel boosters warn that further delays will only increase costs, my immediate response is, well what the fuck did you think was going to happen to when you attempted to ram this through? It’s been nine years since the Nisqually quake marked the Viaduct for immediate demolition; did anybody really think that spitefully sticking Seattle taxpayers with all the risk for a tunnel they don’t particularly want was gonna speed up the replacement process?

And what if the tunnel comes in way over-budget, as mega-project history suggests it is likely to do? Where’s the money gonna come from to finish it? Are we gonna sit for years with a half-dug hole in the ground while the state and the city endlessly litigate their financial obligations? Or will the state shift funds from other parts of the project to complete the tunnel, while leaving the decrepit Viaduct standing like some ancient Roman ruin, until some future tumbler finally knocks it over onto the waterfront? I mean, how the fuck do you even start a project like this without knowing how you’re gonna ultimately pay for it?

There is not, as the Times and others suggest, consensus support for a multi-billion dollar tunnel with no downtown exits or onramps that will only serve 40,000 vehicles a day, though there may very well be a consensus by now to just get this debate over with and build something. I even find myself in “something” camp these days. Hell, I’d settle for anything.

But I’m not willing to settle for anything at any cost… and outside of the Times editorial board, the folks at the Discovery Institute and an apparent majority of city council members, neither are most Seattle taxpayers.

There may not have been consensus support for the surface/transit proposal either, but had the legislature forced that option down our throats — the cheapest and least financially risky of any of the alternatives — we’d probably be building it already, because whatever its downsides, it was by far the most technically, financially and politically doable. Instead, the legislature chose to risk the future fiscal stability of our city for the sake of folks wanting to quickly drive through it.

As utterly fucking ridiculous as the original Big Bore proposal was, that’s nothing compared to the notion of the state assuming all of the responsibilities for building it, while assuming absolutely none of the risks. And until the state proves it can navigate the well-charted sink holes and boulders of Seattle politics, nobody should have confidence in its ability to bore through the uncertain terrain hidden beneath the city.

Guns don’t kill people. Oh wait… yes they do:

Los Angeles police say a 9-year-old boy playing with a loaded gun accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old brother. … [H]omicide detectives interviewed family members and determined that the gun had gone off while the 9-year-old was playing with it.

If there weren’t a gun in the house, that child would still be alive. That’s all I’m saying.

Tea Party Nation canceled their “unity” convention, scheduled for this coming weekend in Las Vegas, claiming it was just too damned hot.

“The heat in Las Vegas in July is keeping many who would like to participate from attending,” organizers wrote last month, earning them mockery far and wide. Organizers said Friday in their weekly newsletter, obtained by TPM, that the rescheduling is “being worked on” so people can plan to attend.

Uh-huh.

No doubt it’s scorching in Las Vegas this time of year, but that won’t stop me and a couple thousand other progressive bloggers and political activists from heading to Sin City the following weekend for Netroots Nation, our annual blogger confab.

I’m not particularly looking forward to a few days of 105+ degree heat… though I’m assured it’s a dry heat, and that they have this newfangled thing called “air conditioning.”

Last week’s contest was won by mlc1us. It was Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts, where a student was fighting to have the Pledge of Allegiance recited in the school.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Deuteronomy 22:13-21
If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the girl’s father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate.  The girl’s father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her.  Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the girl’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.

Discuss.

Okay, I have to ask: do any teenage girls get their fashion advice from Seattle Times editorials?

In a guest editorial today in PubliCola, Seattle City Council president Richard Conlin says the legislative provision pinning Big Bore tunnel cost overruns on Seattle taxpayers is much ado about nothing:

Much ado has been made about a state legislative provision saying that costs in excess of $2.8 billion will be paid by “property owners in the Seattle area”. No city council member supports a policy shift that would force Seattle property owners or local municipalities to pay cost overruns on a project managed by the state.

The Seattle City Attorney and legal professionals have clearly stated that this vague and unprecedented language is legally unenforceable.  The legislature would have to take additional steps that have no precedent in state history to actually figure out how to charge a local government or property owners.  Such steps would be vigorously opposed by all local governments around the state—and the work that the council is doing to develop regional and statewide partnerships positions us well to work effectively with these allies.  Frankly, the issue serves only as a way to alarm and divide Seattleites.

Okay Richard, fine. I trust you on that. But instead of making these assertions in an online editorial, how about making it official? Why not just have the council pass a resolution restating everything you just said here, that the cost overrun provision is illegal and unenforceable, and that the council would vigorously oppose any effort to impose such on Seattle taxpayers. Hell, pass an ordinance prohibiting Seattle from paying for any cost overruns.

Then you, the rest of the council and City Attorney Pete Holmes can stand behind the Mayor as he announces his intention to sign the contracts, but with this caveat in place. (And if the Mayor still won’t sign the contracts without legislative action that he’s not gonna get, well then, that’s his problem.)

The way to get things moving is to help Mayor McGinn to live up to his campaign promise on this issue. You know, help him save a little face.

Is that so hard?

As a legislator, State Rep. Geoff Simpson is absolutely one of my favorite Dems in Olympia. He’s not just reliably progressive, he’s outspokenly so, and in a swing district no less. Where many other Dems — even some pretty good Dems — tend to couch their votes and their public statements with an eye toward their next reelection campaign, Rep. Simpson doesn’t seem to even give shit. Then he fights like hell during the campaign, and somehow manages to win.

You could say he’s one of the few Dems in Olympia with balls.

So it really pains me to read the news that Simpson has been charged with a gross misdemeanor assault stemming from an incident at Seattle Children’s Hospital where his ex-wife attempted to keep him out of a room where their 12-year-old daughter was recovering from surgery.

According to the police report a social worker with Children’s Hospital witnessed the scene and her description of the incident matched what the ex-wife told the officer.

The social worker told the officer she saw Simpson “barrel” into the room, push his wife out and shut the door. According to the social worker’s statement in the police report Simpson closed the blinds and “barricaded himself inside using his body.” The social worker’s statement noted he was yelling inside the room and would not open the door.

I have to admit that if Simpson were a Republican I’d be more than rubbing his nose in this — it’s kinda my job — but I wouldn’t be having much fun. I have empathy for all the parties involved in this incident, Simpson, his ex-wife and their daughter, and I take no joy from reporting (or even exploiting) such personal family tragedies. Corruption and hypocrisy, that’s different, but this kinda stuff is always painful to write about.

And it leaves a lot of Democrats with a terrible dilemma. Rep. Simpson is a great legislator… an effective, outspoken progressive leader who always seems to have the interests of working families at heart. He’s not just another vote in the caucus, and would be hugely missed in Olympia.

And yet, domestic violence, whatever the circumstances (and for a moment, put yourself in Simpson’s shoes and imagine how you might react should your ex-wife block you from entering your daughter’s hospital room) is not something that can be dismissed lightly. I don’t know much more about this incident than what I’ve read online, but I have to trust Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes that his office wouldn’t be prosecuting if they didn’t feel it worthy of prosecution.

So is this enough to ditch Simpson, not only handing over his swing district to the Republicans, but costing us one of our most passionate and effective voices in the state House?

I dunno. I guess I’ll have to wait to learn all the details, and see what Simpson ultimately says for himself. In the wake of an incident two years ago in which charges were dropped after he spent a night in jail, Simpson made a point of reiterating his support for domestic violence laws that left police with little discretion but to detain and charge him in response to a complaint from his ex-wife:

“I’ve thought a lot about this the past several weeks. I don’t like what happened to me and I didn’t like going to jail with all the unpleasantness associated with that. But I think that’s better than the alternative.”

The alternative being that domestic violence reports not be taken seriously enough by the police and the courts.

It’s a complicated issue. Almost as complicated as the dilemma this incident creates for Simpson’s many friends in the Democratic Party.

UPDATE:
Much is being made in the comment thread about this being Simpson’s second  domestic violence charge, but I think it’s important to note that the previous charges were dropped. According to the dismissal motion:

“… based on the alleged victim’s stated intentions for calling 911 at the time of the incident, there is no evidence that the alleged victim was calling 911 to specifically report a domestic violence incident or that the defendant would have reason to believe that she was calling to report domestic violence.”

As I explained at the time, police have little discretion when responding to what they believe to be a domestic violence complaint but to detain and charge the defendant, and for good reason. So while Simpson and his ex clearly have their problems, I’m not sure these two incidents are comparable.

Apparently, Rep. Jay Inslee has been following my coverage of Goldmark v. McKenna, even if most of our local media hasn’t:

“He [McKenna] seems to think he’s the Lands Commissioner, the Secretary of State, the Governor, and the AG,” Inslee said of his potential rival for Governor in 2012.

Huh. You’d think the press might find that interesting. Apparently not.