Liberal Talk Radio

Those of you who are hoping that Seattle’s housing market will take a dive in ‘07 may not get your wish:
But Seattle was not among the markets Moody’s expected to decline. In fact, another Moody’s analyst wrote in August that the Seattle area wasn’t hit as hard by slowing sales for several reasons, chiefly that [...]

Now here’s something disturbing:
For years, the medical world has been abuzz with talk of creating perfect designer babies through prenatal testing.
Now, some doctors are doing the opposite — making babies with made-to-order genetic defects, according to The Associated Press.
The procedure is an ethical minefield, but parents with disabilities like deafness or dwarfism say [...]

Bob Novak gives us his usual insider’s scoop on the Edwards campaign, but don’t think he gets the dynamic right. For example:
Stern and Hoffa are wary of early decisions, and there are things about the Edwards operation that their unions do not like. But their interest in him reflects largely unspoken discontent in Democratic [...]

Libya sentenced six people to die after their conviction for infecting over 400 children with HIV. The problem? They didn’t do it.
The medics have protested their innocence throughout, retracting confessions that they said were obtained under torture and arguing that they are being made scapegoats for unhygienic hospitals.
The defence team told the court [...]

Er, except it’s actually a shot of Standard Liege (Belgium) fans thanking American Oguchi Onyewu for his service as he prepares to move on in his career — reportedly, to super-club Real Madrid.

Photo is from Standard Liege.

Pot is California’s biggest cash crop.
Yawn. One of these days, the Feds are actually going to look at their own stats and realize the War on Drugs has been a wrongheaded disaster.  Until then, we’ll just have to rely on the personal moral choices of a handful of old white men in the DEA.

I revile the Governor’s decision to put the tunnel to a vote.
So, in protest, here’s my commentary on why ballot initiatives (and direct democracy generally) are bad.

Quick. What middle-eastern country with a history of U.S. intervention has actually managed to turn itself into a functioning (if flawed) democracy?
Hint: it’s not Iraq.
Opponents of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took an early lead in key races in Iran’s local elections, according to partial results announced Monday, with moderate conservatives winning control of [...]

I meant to blog this on Friday, but it slipped my mind. We would now officially be less than a year away from the Seattle Monorail’s opening day (12/15/07), had voters not shit-canned the project last year.
Meanwhile, Sound Transit is on track to open its airport link in 2009 (3 years late) [...]

The push to reform the U.S. educational system, including the smart idea to push kids out after the tenth grade, is validated in part by quandaries like the one faced in Arizona regarding slacking seniors:
It’s senior year and the hardest work is over. For many high school students, that means it’s time to coast.
The usual [...]