As the GOP 39th District Chair, I never would have told a candidate they needed to bow to me. A district chair is no one special, and candidates have no need to genuflect. Sure, it's wise to talk to them, but it's not a "snub" to not do so, except in the overinflated ego that perceives it.

And neither would I claim that a candidate needed to "earn" the right to run as a Republican to my satisfaction. Instead, I would merely expect that Republicans wouldn't vote for someone who hadn't done anything to help the party they were trying to represent, respecting the right of the candidate to run as he wishes, and the wisdom of the voters who will likely find that candidate wanting. I'd advise the candidate he would have little chance without name recognition or support of the party, especially against an incumbent, but I wouldn't tell him whether to run. That's his choice.

I especially love that Carlson says you can't support charter schools and be a Democrat. Tell that to President Obama, maybe?

But the best part is when he makes a "demand" that the fellow stop using the party label. He has no authority to make such a demand. The party does have that right to a limited extent, but Carlson isn't the party, and worse -- in this particular context -- the law is quite clear that the candidate has a right to say what his "party preference" is, which the courts have ruled does not amount to a de facto claim of affiliation with the party. Feel free to tell the world that the guy isn't a Democrat (we've told the world that certain candidates are not Republicans), but you have literally no right to make the demand that they can't say what their party preference is.

Your gripe, Carlson, is not with a candidate you dislike that calls himself a Democrat, but with Senator McAuliffe and other politicians in both our parties that have cheerleaded our downward slide toward the confusion that is now represented by the "Top Two" primary, leading to the various federal lawsuits both our parties have engaged in.

At the park-and-ride I use there's six bike lockers. They are a few feet tall and a couple wide and they fully enclose the bikes, with the doors secured by padlock. I thought this would be a nice place to put my bike, but with limited resources, I didn't think one would be available. I looked into it more, and my chances were decreased further: to get one, there's only a one-time deposit of $50, and you keep it as long as you like. I emailed Community Transit and got my name on a waiting list.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking that I'd never seen anyone use the lockers that I could remember, and there's probably people who get the lockers but rarely use them, because there's no disincentive to holding onto it without using it. I thought that maybe they should charge a quarterly fee for use, just to encourage people to give up a locker they aren't using.

So last week, I got email that a locker opened up, and oh, by the way, they might start charging $5 a month just to make people more likely to not hold on to lockers they aren't using. The letter noted that if I wanted to not participate because of the extra fee, that would be fine; my response is that -- while of course I want that money -- it's the right thing to do, and I'm glad they are doing it.

It reminds me a little bit of an Obama anti-Romney ad I saw this morning bashing Mitt Romney because he tried to maximize profits, and fired workers. But ... maybe it was the right thing to do. Maximizing profits is good. Firing workers is often a good and necessary part of that. I was fired a couple of years ago, with a bunch of other guys who had been around more than 10 years, because the company thought I cost it too much money. Maybe they were right. I was never once angry at the company or the people who made the decision, though I was disappointed in it, because I understand that they thought it was in the company's best interests: not just the shareholders, but the other employees and customers, too.

I don't want to be fired (erm, "laid off") or pay extra fees, but I do want organizations to do economically right things, and I won't selfishly hold it against them when they do.

Apparently, I didn't.

Look, Mitt Romney apparently did something pretty nasty. But he was a young man at a prep school in the 60s. That's not to say everyone would do what he did: I was bullied, and stood up to people who bullied me and others. I hated bullying and I still do. But I also recognize the truth that young men will act this way, and there's nothing we can do about it. It's the responsibility of the bullied to stand up to it and deal with it, and it's the responsibiity of the bullies to grow out of it, and it's the responsibility of the adults to help both of them.

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I made a conscious choice to no longer give a damn about people who disliked me, for whatever reason. It was as if a massive weight was lifted off my shoulders. I no longer allowed my emotions and view of self to be controlled by what others thought. Granted, not everyone can do this, and it was doubly easier for me: not only do I have a personality that allows me to easily do this, but I was physically larger than most of the bullies, which meant that while maybe I was teased or even occasionally attacked, it was far less for me than it was with smaller kids who were bullied. But the principle still holds: you have bootstraps; use them.

I've occasionally thought about kids who have bullied me and my friends in the past, and with one exception -- one kid who bullied everyone all the time, pretty much, and I stood up to him and got a sucker-punch bloody nose for it -- I can't see how I could possibly hold it against them today in any way, even thinking that it says anything negative about them as grown men. They were boys. That's what boys do. It doesn't mean anything now. Even for the one exception, I like to think he grew out of it, but he was on a pretty bad trajectory for a long time.

At the end of the day, with the kid Romney apparently attacked, it's just hair. If I found out my son did this, I probably would have given him a really terrible haircut with patches missing and made him go to school every day for a week with it, along with apologizing to the other kid, and loss of certain privileges for awhile. And if I found out my son was attacked like this, I'd simultaneously help him deal with it gracefully, while encouraging the school and other parents to take action. These are all learning experiences that happen with boys, and they're pretty well universal.

The only story this story tells me is that Mitt Romney was a young man, which I had already guessed.

In a much more realistic accounting of the quality of business opportunities in Washington State than the 7th best spot Forbes offers, ChiefExecutive.net named Washington the 37th best state for business.

In part, the discrepancy is likely due to Forbes not considering Washington's unique taxation system for business, and at least some underestimation of the negative impacts of regulation in the state, but that's not the whole story. There's a very clear difference in bias between the organizations where Forbes favors generally liberal, Democratic states much more highly than it does more conservative, Republican states (and ChiefExecutive.net, vice versa).

Whether this is an intentional bias on the part of one or both organizations, or bias in how the various criteria are chosen, or some other reason, the results are striking: Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, and Minnesota are all more than 20 spots higher in Forbes than in CEO. And Indiana, Nevada, Florida, and South Carolina are more than 20 sports higher in CEO than in Forbes.

Mapping these results to E.C results or party control is left to the reader.

This is based largely on the idea that our state's constitution says, "It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders." So they think to uphold that responsibility, we need a billion more dollars.

The problem is that it is not just a duty of the state, but the paramount duty of the state. So if you need a billion dollars for education to uphold that responsibility, and you are spending a billion dollars on other things, then you take the money from those other things. That's what our constitution says.

It's always a lie for our state politicians to say we need more money for education. They are simply using education as a way to fund other projects, because they know the public is going to be in favor of education more than any other project. So if they lie and say education needs money, they are more likely to get that money.

Don't fall for it. Demand that education is funded first, as our constitution requires. If they want more revenue for other things, let them ask for it, honestly.

Therefore, Biden said Obama should never have been President, since he had even less foreign policy experience than Romney's got.

(In fairness, to Biden, he wasn't actually saying that, because he wasn't actually responding to what Romney actually said, but instead lying about what Romney said, inventing this idea that Romney was implying other people should make the foreign policy decisions for the President. But no, what Romney actually said was exactly what Bush and Obama said when running for office, and what they did as President: that you listen to the actual experts, and you as President make the choices.)

I think he was celebrating, he saw Harden out of the corner of his eye, and he just reacted by swinging his elbow. Now, for most people, this would be sufficient to establish intent: a normal person would see something out of the corner of their eye on the basketball court after a scoring play, know it's a fellow player, and avoid serious contact.

But Artest is not a normal person. He has very low intelligence, being unable to quickly process and understand events around him, and he has extremely poor impulse control (demonstrated dozens of times over the years). In his mind, he was just celebrating, and this dude was there, so he just swung to keep up his celebrating and momentum ... maybe swinging harder because, well, someone's in his way, right?

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me, either. But I think it makes sense to Artest. That there might be significant consequences to his actions -- serious injury to Harden, long suspension for himself -- doesn't even register in his low-functioning brain. There's just the moment, and his desire to celebrate, and nothing else matters.

It's not even that he doesn't care about Harden in that moment: it's that Harden is nothing, a nonperson, an entity with no meaning. Anything outside of Artest and what he cares about in a given moment simply doesn't exist to him.

Artest is accused of being malicious in this event, but malice requires more than I think Artest, in that moment, was even capable of. Artest should not be kicked out of the league because he is a goon or a jerk or evil or malicious, but because he has serious mental deficiencies that -- combined with his size and strength -- make him a serious danger to everyone around him.

The NBA should have kicked him out of the league permanently after he started a brawl in Detroit (not that this is hard to do) seven seasons ago. Fights, pulling down the pants of opponents, drinking alcohol during halftime, asking for time off from the season to work on an R&B album ... the list goes on. He is an uncontrolled moron, he's terrible for the league, and he's a threat to other players, whether he intends it or not.

Koster's campaign literally did nothing wrong. In fact, they did everything right. So this literally isn't even a story. It's just a way to tie Koster to anti-abortion activists, Citizens United (ooo! hate!), and people who have "poured more than million dollars" [sic] into Tim Eyman initiatives. The article, purportedly about a campaign finance violation, is just an ideological wink-and-a-nod toward liberal voters.

The left counters, "but these are just facts." Sure, but they are very selectively chosen facts: they only mention three donors, each of them designed to inflame liberals, all in the context of a "story" about someone donating too much money, without choosing to note the fact that this happens in all large campaigns (Obama had thousands of donors who exceeded contribution limits in 2008; presumably, all or most of that was refunded or reallocated).

I don't see any evidence Obama is a brilliant constitutional lawyer. He sure is a lawyer, but being a professor doesn't make you brilliant, or any sort of expert. And I see plenty of evidence that his understanding of the Constitution is extremely weak.

Worse, though, I am thoroughly convinced that Obama not only is not devoted to the rule of law, but that he actively *hates* the rule of law. The rule of law is what says the government is extremely limited. Obama clearly believes in ignoring that rule of law, and he does it all the time, whether it is banning handguns in DC, illegally wiretapping, ordering companies to comply with nonlegal memoranda, or forcing all Americans to buy health insurance.

Indeed, in his inaugural address -- and many times since -- he came right out and said he puts practicality above legality, and chided us who believe otherwise as "cynics" with "stale political arguments." Sure, he didn't say "practicality above legality": but that's what he clearly meant when he said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works," because -- as a brilliant constitutional lawyer -- Obama knows the argument about governmnent being too big is largely based on the Tenth Amendment.

Ignoring Tribe's laughable claim that it is a "fact" that "precedent and historical practice alike would lead a suitably cautious court to uphold rather than overturn" the Affordable Care Act, when in actual fact the Court has in recent years forced the government to back up its claims that the law or precedent justifies particular questionable exercises of power, and almost everyone seems to agree that the Solicitor General failed in that task ... it's nevertheless transparently dishonest when Tribe shrugs off Obama's repeated criticisms of the Supreme Court while attacking Judge Smith's criticism of Obama.

I agree that Smith was wrong, as I mentioned recently: he has no authority to order the DOJ to even write that letter, let alone get involved in what is clearly a purely political exercise by the President. Yes, Obama should shut his trap about the Court while they are deliberating instead of trying to rally the public against them. But our judges should stay above Obama's lowball tactics.

Of course, some of the same candidates will be running for both positions, but since the primary is "top two" for both, we might not have the same people on the general for both, especially since the old WA-1 is very different from the new one. The new one is much more rural than the old one, and -- as a new resident of WA-1 myself -- I look to a change in party control when John Koster -- way ahead in a recent poll -- wins the seat for the new term. But he very well may not be able to win the remainder of Inslee's term, because those will be largely different voters.

The worst thing is that Inslee could have avoided this if he had resigned a week earlier, and he knew that at the time. Some think Inslee should be required to pay the cost. That's silly, of course, but with Governor Gregoire saying, "It is important that the people of the 1st District have representation, especially in December when key votes on matters that affect our state may need to be cast," you'd think she could have had a few words for their lack of representation from most of March through November.

My therapist tells me my back is pretty bad in certain ways, and that it might benefit from certain chiropractic treatment. Of course, chiropractic treatment varies widely between practitioners and so on, so they were hesitant about just telling me to seek such treatment, because it might not help, and might even make matters worse.

But here's the bizarre thing: they tell me that they know how to do this treatment. They were trained. They could help me right now, saving me significant time, money, and risk to my health. But they tell me they can't because Washington State won't let them, adding that it is part of a "turf war" between chiropractors and physical therapists.

I thought that the liberal Democrats who run this state had a problem with government getting between a medical professional and their patients.

One more illusion shattered.

I don't really mean this as a partisan attack. But this policy of government making my health care decisions is directly harming me, and I just wish that when they said something, they meant it.

The biggest confusion is in what a secret ballot is, and why it's needed. A secret ballot is one that is -- as the state constitution requires -- prepared and desposited in secret. The reason why we have it is to prevent bribery and coercion. If someone is pressuring or paying you to vote a certain way, and they cannot actually see your ballot, they cannot know how you filled it out; therefore, the ballot is protected from such influence.

We could argue about whether this is important. I think it is. But the facts and history are inescapable: we do not have a secret ballot in Washington State, and the Washington State Constitution requires that we do.

The other big problem some people had with the resolution was the effect on those who need absentee voting, because they are for some legitimate reason incapable of going to the polls. I had mentioned that this would be up to the legislature to address as they saw fit through introduction of a constitutional amendment, but we directly addressed the concern by adding "and that the Legislature introduce a constitutional amendment providing for absentee voting for electors unable to go to the polls" to the end of the resolution.

(Well, technically, that's not true. You could skip the caucuses, and then get a delegate from the precinct caucuses to the next level to nominate you, and then get elected as a delegate there. But that's harder. Don't do that.)

Now, as I've mentioned before, there's no actual voting at the precinct caucuses. You simply state your preference when you sign in (or state no preference, or cross out the box, or something). Then the parties count up the preferences of all attendees, and report those results to the media. It's just a straw poll.

Personally, I'm writing Mitt Romney as my preference. I am, however, in the -- I suspect -- fairly unique position of wanting Santorum to "win." Now, some of you may think it's because I agree with Santorum more, but I think Romney has the best chance of winning, or somesuch. But that's not the case.

Now, I do think Romney has the best chance of winning, and that he would be a significantly better leader than Santorum (or Gingrich, or Paul). But I like and agree with Romney about the same as I do with Santorum (which, unfortunately, is not as much as I'd prefer, but I think either one will do a reasonably good job as President).

So it's not out of any internal conflict that I want Romney to be the candidate, but want Santorum to win the precinct caucuses. It's actually because I like to see a good race; I like both candidates; and I like it when the media loses its head over how terrible Santorum is.

But both, and the journalist (Miles O'Brien), miss the point that voting secrecy is not solved by online voting, it's exacerbated.

O'Brien says, "Commander Wells ended up faxing in his marked ballot, relinquishing his constitutional right to secrecy."

Like most people in this debate, he don't understand what voting secrecy is. The principle of secrecy in voting is not that you are allowed to keep your vote a secret, but that you are NOT allowed to NOT keep your vote a secret. You can tell someone how you voted, but they'll never know for certain because they didn't actually see you vote.

This means that any time you are voting outside of a private polling booth, you are surrendering your right to secrecy. This includes all forms of voting at home, whether via absentee ballot or online.

The reason this principle exists is primarily so that no one can coerce you. Wells could have his commanding officer looking over his shoulder as he votes. Employers influencing employees. Unions influencing workers. Husbands influencing wives, or vice versa, or influencing their adult kids.

It's also to help prevent selling your vote. Online voting exacerbates this problem: people could sell their authentication information, and then someone else could literally vote for them.

That's not to say we can't have absentee voting. But when we do, we literally give up our right to voting secrecy.

In the state of Washington, where I live, we have no more right to secrecy, because the state is (except for one county) all vote-at-home. You can mail in your ballot, or you can drop it off in a (somewhat) secured box. If you're like me, and you recognize the importance of secrecy, and you have the time, you travel to your county auditor's office on election day and vote on the Disabled Access Voting machines, which are the only way you can still have a secret ballot in most of the state.