By coincidence, it was while we were sitting in the over-crowded number 14 bus on the way to work when we came across this gem of an article in the New York Times: "Drop in Miles Driven Is Depleting Highway Fund; Loan From Mass Transit Is Urged." Our sneering disbelief was interrupted by being smacked in the face by the laptop bag of the guy standing next to our seat in the aisle; the 14......

...you're all about to be caught.......

We've been following the Dead Prez/Evergreen State College story here, here, and definitely here in our search to understand what actually happened after that hip hop concert. It certainly was not the beginning of a revolution, as Evergreen students have been protesting anything and everything since time began; it also wasn't The Man reenacting Tien'anmen Square. Ultimately, it sounds like a case of overreaction on both sides, magnified by the strange jelly of tension that's......

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they will discuss the Democratic race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Seattlest-- How do you feel Senator Clinton's recent attacks on Senator Obama are shaping the upcoming Texas and Ohio primaries? Jeff (San Francisco Chronicle)-- I've got to come clean with my dirty secret-- I'm starting to get cold feet......

Like anybody else, we appreciate the sentiment of the Presidents' Day long weekend--well, for those of us who have that day off or are able to take it. It provided us the perfect opportunity to temporarily ex-patriate ourselves and pump money into Canada's economy. That's what it's all aboot, anyway. This so-named Presidents' Day has become just a reason for the commercial sector to entice us with Fabulous Savings. Nobody thinks about Washington or......

M. Coy Books on Pine is closing, and, because we spent hours and hours there as a teenager without buying anything, we're feeling a bit jerk-ish for not having patronized the place more in adulthood. Founder Michael Coy (yeah, he founded Bailey/Coy, too) sure knows how to make us feel like a tool. He tells the P-I: "We're going to miss interaction with our customers, but we will not miss waking up in the middle......

Last night there were tons of Ron Paul's people outside the Showbox Sodo. Before, during, and after Barack Obama's fundraising event/rally, the Paul supporters waved their signs and interacted with anyone who would give them the time of day. Too bad they couldn't afford tickets to the event due to the current tax structure--if only someone would abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve.... Meanwhile, inside the venue was a crowd of teens, twenty-somethings,......

While trolling through today's Floor Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives for our other job (it's an exciting one), we noticed something that will probably get no coverage anywhere else. However, we think it is important to note when Congress singles out one faith as important. We think it's doubly important to note when the vote is taken while Congress fights with the Bush Administration over funding the government for the next year, haggles......

So we all know the world is going to hell in a hand basket, right? The climate's changing, San Diego is burning to the ground and we're at war because the president lied to Congress. Things are bad. But every once in awhile you come across someone who is doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Dan Freeman is one of those guys. He runs Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks and sells......

The Stranger has endorsed a No vote on the RTID Proposition 1 (along with the Seattle Times, but thankfully with more logic and, er, research). Their reasoning? "Rather than letting compromised politicians tell us what's possible, the people should tell the leaders what's needed: more light rail without massive roads expansion." So what is the proper course of action for Congress regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, bill? The bill would ban employment discrimination......

It's not exactly mind-blowingly awesome legislation, but our lady Maria Cantwell and her pals in the Senate have managed to negotiate a mileage standard for all U.S. cars and SUVs today. Currently, cars have to get at least 27.5 miles per gallon, while SUVs only have to get a measly 22 mpg. That's pretty pathetic from an environmentalist perspective, but it's also irresponsible from a business perspective. After all, just about every other country has......

The headline: "White House E-Mail Inquiry Will Widen." The story: how the Bush administration has quite possibly made a major infraction, broken big giant rules, or in the P-I's words, "committed 'extensive' [legal] violations." Remember that whole Alberto Gonzalez thing? Where it was speculated that the Attorney General deliberately fired a bevy of federal attorneys for political reasons, to appease a certain political agenda? There was a moment during all that hoo-ah when someone mentioned......

It's always good to be reminded that here in the other Washington, our Republicans are just as nutty, corrupt and paranoid as their cousins in D.C. Today, David Postman over at the Times reports on his blog that state Sen. Joe Zarelli recently hosted right-wing Israeli politicians and others at a two-day conference down in Vancouver, to fan the flames of Islamophobia. Known as the Convergence Northwest conference, Zarelli invited "[m]embers of Israel’s Knesset, former......

City Council President Nick Licata will be fulfilling his wettest dream on Thursday when he testifies before Congress on the negative economic impact of publicly-funded sports arenas (something we wrote our senior thesis on, thank you very much). He'll also be talking about his role in stopping the Sonics from getting taxpayers to pay for what Howard Schultz and the other 52 former Sonic owners could have easily done. What makes this even more exciting......

Kyle Sampson, the top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, has resigned, as it becomes more and more clear that US attorneys who were fired in December, including Seattle-based John McKay, were fired for political reasons. On his blog, the Seattle Times' David Postman eviscerates Gonzalez' explanation of the firings. Gonzalez himself canceled travel plans and testified to Congress today, admitting that "mistakes were made." Now, Democrats want Gonzalez to resign, and we can't help......

Another in a string of online sex stings recently caught ex King County Prosecutor's Office employee Lawrence Corrigan trying to meet up with a 13-year-old for sex. You asshole, Lawrence. Undercover detectives targeted Lawrence after learning that he was communicating with young girls online. A detective contacted him and Lawrence emailed a bunch of porn and set up a meeting outside of a Capitol Hill video store and when he showed for that meeting he......

Sometimes, The Seattle Times has got to make you wonder. It was one thing to go ahead and endorse David Reichert for Congress over Darcy Burner despite widespread dissatisfaction with Republican leadership, but to spin his shameless partisanship as moderation? That's a new low. In today's Times, chief political reporter David Postman tries to defend Reichert's damning comment (currently viewable in high-rotation Democratic Party attack ad) that, "[W]hen the leadership comes to me and says,......

In the old days, when men were men and trees fit in the ground, newspapers were no less biased than the average KVI caller. Most were organs of one political party or the other, and as a result were very entertaining. Then some wisenheimer got the idea that newspapers should be unbiased, and as a result you get the awful flabby boring unreadable product that is the modern American daily newspaper, with headlines like......

What did we learn at trivia last night? We learned that Mike Piazza's homosexuality-denial campaign has largely been successful. We learned that Shawn Kemp jokes are not only limitless, but very funny. And--from the names of two teams--about a scandal in Congress regarding some Foley fellow. (we just wonder if there's tension on film sets between the Foley editor and the best boy) The verbal questions are after the jump if you care to test......

A common liberal criticism of Congressman Dave Reichert (R-Eastside) is that, despite cultivating an outsider image, he's in lockstep with the Republican Party. Darcy Burner, Reichert's Democratic opponent for Congress, also portrays herself as an outsider. From her campaign website: It's clear to me that the politicians in Washington, DC are out of touch, the special interests have too much power, and it's time to take our country in a different direction. Yet yesterday,......

We sat down to write something about congress's attack on internet gambling and the parallels to Washington state's recent anti-online poker legislation, but a few quick Google searches that started out as "research" morphed into an hour of Texas Hold 'Em. An hour, it turns out, is exactly as long as it takes a complete idiot to lose $1000 of play money at a poker table. Congress's bill doesn't explicitly prohibit online gambling like our......

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned.......

As both the Seattle Times and P-I are reporting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's latest national ad campaign in support of Republican lawmakers has had to be tweaked a tiny bit. The P-I's coverage strikes us as more genuinely perturbed at the gross incompetence (or political "knavery" as they put it) involved: This time, the chamber aired a TV commercial suggesting that freshman Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., voted for an expansion of the Medicare......

The guy at Fort Lewis who has "serious reservations" about war fighting in Iraq to the extent that he's refusing to deploy is Honolulu native Ehren Watada. Assuming that he's the sole Ehren Watada from Hawaii it looks like his dad is Bob Watada who was the executive director of the state Campaign Spending Commission in Hawaii for a long time and according to the available reports kicked a lot of ass in that capacity.......

Congressman Jim McDermott will be playing all the hits, sending out your long distance dedications, and generally getting the Led out all week. Tired of trying to make-out with Osama, Saddam, and the rest of those Al-Qaeda villains, Baghdad Jim will be hosting Dave Ross' weekly KIRO radio show while Ross is on vacation. One question you may want to ask McDermott, besides what exactly do you do for Seattle, is what should be done......

The weeks starts out right when a sucker punch on the field lands Chicagoist in the middle of a Sox/Cubs throwdown and the fists continue to fly in the comments. Despite suburban resident Ms. Pinney's best little try no books will be banned anytime soon and the El is really really gross. Houstonist is there to start compiling the punditry when when the guilty, guilty Enron verdict comes down. This guy seems to be able......

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much. LAist has finally come around to purchasing tickets for Clipper Train. Hyper local dating sites are spamming L.A. neighborhoods and the fascinating Dame Darcy talks with LAist about art, the city and earthquakes.......

Well, it was certainly eye catching. We tried to walk past the P-I on a newsstand yesterday and it might as well have reached out with with a cluster of fish hooks to our eyeballs. What kind of a headline was that? A bunch of different colors, a bunch of different weights, a bunch of different sizes; it had it all and it took up the entire front page. When we first saw it we......

In 2000, hard core lefties who were fed up with the Democratic Party voiced their displeasure by voting for Ralph Nader-- and we all know how that turned out. In 2004, realizing what they were up against, they got behind the party and voted for their fears over their dreams. It should be interesting to see what they do this fall. Senator Cantwell has irked many lefties with her vote for the war in Iraq,......

Yesterday, in the midst of a would-be rush hour, Seattle bore witness to one of the largest marches the city has seen in many years. Seattlest watched from our office as police hit the streets, roads were blocked, and busses and other downtown traffic slowed to a desperate crawl. According to reports, this march was to be larger than the last one, but it was tough to say. Either way, it was big, and......