Law and Justice

Sausage Links, Weathermen edition

Joel Connelly has finally admitted to consorting with known terrorists. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist writes today that, along with his late dog, S'Murphy Brown, he made a cup of tea and a toasted bagel for Weatherman Bill Ayers, the 1960s anti-Vietnam War radical who targeted the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol in a series of bombings. GOP operatives have been trying desperately to link Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to Ayers — the two are not close, but have met several times over the years and served on a charitable board together — in an effort to curb Obama's sizable lead in the polls and turn the focus of the campaign away from the economy. So far, the plan hasn't been a success. Connelly, meanwhile, is ashamed:

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Sausage Links, HOV lane endorsement edition

The Seattle Times is recommending voters reject Initiative 985, the Tim Eyman-sponsored measure that would create a statewide "traffic congestion relief" fund, eliminate localized revenues for devices such as red-light cameras, and open HOV lanes during non-peak hours. The paper's editorial board writes, "I-985 is a poorly-packaged jumble of different agendas that will – please, listen carefully – worsen traffic in certain areas. It makes no sense to design a functioning, complicated traffic system by initiative." ...

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Sausage Links, the big debate edition

So. Tonight's the big vice-presidential debate between Republican Gov. Sarah Palin and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden. Which Palin will show up? Will we see the pitbull with lipstick or the incoherent Couric interviewee? It's anybody's guess. But with expectations already at rock-bottom, it's fair to assume she'll look better than many liberals think. What about Biden? As former Gore advisor Michael Feldman wrote in the Washington Post this morning, Biden's mission is not to screw it up. ...

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Snohomish bank robber figures out new use for Craigslist

Someone's got to be hashing out the film rights to this right now. In a heist reminiscent of The Thomas Crown Affair and the Joker's crew of lookalikes in the Dark Knight's opening bank robbery, a thief in southern Snohomish County apparently recruited unwitting decoys on Craigslist to aid his escape. Police told the Everett Herald that a man who robbed an armored-car guard in Monroe Tuesday posted a job ad on Craigslist to flood the scene of his escape with hopeful workers. According to a witness, the man dressed in a blue shirt and dust mask. After pepper-spraying the guard, he fled toward a nearby creek, where he may have used an inner tube to escape in Woods Creek, toward the nearby Skykomish River.

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Sausage Links, Buildergate edition

Liberal bloggers are delirious with joy about Buildergate, the series of allegations announced yesterday accusing Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi of directly and illegally soliciting funds from the Master Builder's Association in May 2007 to fund the Building Industry Association of Washington's "war chest." Both David Goldstein at Horse's Ass and Aaron Ostrom at FUSE call the memo a "smoking gun" and a game-changer for the hotly contested gubernatorial race.

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How accurate is Battle in Seattle?

A journalist and former Seattle City Council member who led the council's investigation into the WTO riots faults the film for claiming too much for the protesters. More disturbing was the picture of dreamy nonchalance in planning that the investigation revealed about City Hall and Seattle Police.

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Sausage Links, cheap shot edition

The folks at Horse's Ass report that while state Attorney General Rob McKenna has already filed suit against the Building Industry Association of Washington for multiple campaign finance violations, new evidence suggests that Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi may have "actively solicited funds" on behalf of the BIAW. If it's true it would be a deadly blow to Rossi's campaign. While the big papers haven't yet caught on, I guarantee you'll be reading about "buildergate" tomorrow. ...

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Sausage Links, skeptical journalists' edition

"Journalists, start your skepticism." That was the tagline from a letter to Romenesko yesterday from David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on tax policy. It's worth a read. Johnston cautions reporters not to "assume that Congress must act instantly, as so many news stories state as if it was an immutable fact," nor to accept "what gullible Congressional leaders, most of them up before the voters in a few weeks, say after being given a closed-door meeting on supposed horrors." ...

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'Death with dignity' vs. 'physician-assisted suicide'

Words often have powerful meaning, and the debate over terminology used in a ballot measure and in news reports could well determine the fate of Washington's Initiative 1000, known by its supporters as "death with dignity" and by critics and some in the media as "physician-assisted suicide" or simply "assisted suicide."

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Sausage Links, abandon ship edition

Liberal bloggers gotta love this. Some of the elite conservative pundits are growing skeptical about the McCain campaign's performance in the past weeks. Others are jumping ship altogether. The latest to leave the GOP stable is Washington Post columnist George Will, who says the Republican presidential candidate "is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high." Last week, the editorial board at the traditionally conservative The Wall Street Journal wrote that "McCain has made it clear this week he doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does," adding that the Arizona senator was acting "un-presidential."

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The latest from news outlets and blogs around the Northwest and beyond, chosen by Crosscut editors.

FBI searches downtown Spokane apartment in ricin investigation

Some two dozen police and federal agents spent the morning in an apartment search that began after dawn this morning. 

SPOKANE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Murder conviction in Monroe officer case paves way for death penalty decision

A jury took less than an hour to convict inmate Byron Scherf of strangling Monroe corrections officer Jayme Biendel. Next week: the death penalty phase of the trial.

HERALD (EVERETT)

Seattle police officer injured in May Day 'protest'

Seattle police say one officer was injured when he was hit by an object that was thrown near Minor and Pine shortly after 8 p.m. The extent of the officer’s injuries was not immediately known.

SEATTLE TIMES

Gitmo hunger strikers weaken as we look away

A good percentage have been cleared for release but we are doing nothing.

NEW YORKER

Former Spokane-based attorney joins Boston bomber case

Judy Clarke, a well-known death penalty lawyer, will be part of the team defending Boston suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Clarke was the executive director of the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho in Spokane from 1992 to 2002. 

SPOKANE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Pot users can be fired, Colo. court says

The Colorado Court of Appeals decided Thursday that marijuana users don't have job protection. 

NEWS TRIBUNE (TACOMA)

My regular visits to the increasingly religious Tsarnaev family in Boston

"I started getting facials from Zubeidat Tsarnaeva six years ago when I was 17 at a spa in the Boston area."

SALON

Boston suspects had weapons to do more harm

An official said the throat wound suffered by Dzokhar Tsarnaev appears to have been self-inflicted.

NEW YORK TIMES

Remembering Anthony Lewis: How one NY Times columnist became the nation's voice for justice

"As a young lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, I was often the beneficiary of Lewis’s storytelling. In the late 1980s and through the 1990s I represented several men and women whom the government sought to deport for their political affiliations or ideas, often on the basis of secret evidence that they had no opportunity to confront or rebut."

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

Boston's victims: Sean Collier

"When MIT Police Chief John DiFava heard that a very promising young officer named Sean Collier probably would get a call he had long been hoping for — an invitation to join the Somerville Police Department — the chief pushed him to stay."

BOSTON GLOBE
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