Liberal Talk Radio

The Prof, some friends and I had a lively debate the other night about I-1000, the “Death With Dignity” (a.k.a. physician-assisted suicide, or PAS) initiative being considered in Washington State this fall.
I was torn about it: my libertarian and progressive instincts both told me to support it (individual rights), but I’m conservative enough [...]

Obama’s up 10 points in Washington State, but Gregoire’s running dead even with Rossi, 48-48. Eli Sanders asks:
What’s that about?
Now, I may be an unfrozen caveman lawyer, but what I do know is that the Guv stopped governing a couple of years ago, afraid that if she actually did anything, Rossi might use [...]

That’s the personality profile of the Pacific Northwest. Which goes a long way towards explaining why rousing us to great causes or movements is nigh on impossible.
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We pause a moment from the erudite and enlightened dialog you’ll usually find on this site to bring you a tale of woe possible only in Seattle.
For years, I’d heard the rumors that the Seattle police actually write tickets for jaywalking. Well, turns out the rumors are true.

Just when I was starting to think [...]

Our local Tim Russert is taking a job at City Hall. That’s a real loss for Seattle. The phrase “local television journalist” is now once again an oxymoron.

It’s a little too wonky and academic for my, um, tastes, but Goldy has the definitife solution to our education funding problems in Washington State.

Reading the arguments against building a suicide barrier on the Aurora bridge, I’m struck by just how little people take into account the public health issues at stake. People can be very callous about the jumpers (”If we build a barrier, they’ll just go jump somewhere else!”), but they’re almost totally ignorant of the [...]

Goldy has a great take-down of the Seattle Times’ disingenuous efforts to paint Gov. Gregoire as an out-of-control spender.
Indeed, as a liberal, my biggest beef with Gregoire is that she hasn’t invested enough in the state. If she was actually the tax-and-spend socialist that the Times portrays her as, I’d be a lot happer [...]

Josh Feit wants to know why conservatves are more aggressive in using voter initiatives than liberals.
I think a large part of the answer is simply the fact that Democrats control both houses of the legislature and the Governorship. Initiatives referenda are better suited to the party out-of-power.
But Feit also makes a [...]

David Brewster has an unintentionally hilarious article on how stuff gets done in Olympia these days. All legislation goes through Frank Chopp, which means that every legislation has to appeal to Chopp’s erogenous zones “values field”:
As the various parties try to sort out a new solution for the Seattle waterfront (divert some traffic through [...]