There has been a lot of finger wagging about the Spokane City Council devoting its Monday night meeting to a public outpouring over the state’s new gay marriage law. Some of my co-conspirators in the media argue that council members should stick to topics that are within the scope of their control. That’s one way to look at it. The wrong way, alas. Now I won’t argue the logic. I agree it’s a waste of time for the City Council to get bogged down in nonbinding resolutions like gay marriage. And that’s a bad thing, how? Look at it this way. For this one glorious Monday evening … No parking meter rates were raised. Not one more red light intersection camera was installed. While citizens wrangled passionately over the definition of marriage, our hamstrung leaders couldn’t come up with any new ways to pick our pockets/Doug Clark, SR. More here.

Question: Would you rather see your City Council get bogged down on nonbinding resolutions involving topics like gay marriage than to handle its usual business?

In the latest example of your busybody government at work, Spokane’s City Council has decided to make outlaws out of we citizens who dare toss snow into the streets. Weird. I don’t remember snow fines being promised by any Council candidates during the recent campaign season. But in a 5-1 vote, the council ruled to charge homeowners 52 bucks for acts of slushy defiance. Well, bring it on, plowboys. I’ll come clean. I’ve been known to throw snow into the boulevard now and then. And I liked it. That’s because it was usually after some renegade plow jockey turned the Clark driveway into the iceberg that sank the Titanic. So no cheesy fine is gonna scare me. Besides, who’ll enforce this snow job?/Doug Clark, SR. More here.

Question: When did you last throw a snowball at someone or something?

This Year of the Dragon is starting out on a real high. Monday night, for example, our new so-called “conservative” Spokane City Council agreed unanimously that medical marijuana should be legal and available to those who need it. So give council members big hookah huzzahs for standing up to the federal government’s pot paranoia. Being weed free means my knowledge on this subject is limited to Seth Rogen movies. But I know enough to see medical marijuana as the municipal bong, I mean, boon we’ve all been praying for. Until they were so rudely shut down by the feds last year, medical marijuana dispensaries were about to become an even bigger growth industry than towing cars out of Browne’s Addition/Doug Clark, SR. More here.

Question: The Spokane City Council supports medical marijuana. Gov. Butch Otter doesn't. Who's right?

In a file photo, Steve Tuttle, director of communications for Taser International Inc., holds the X26c stun gun.

SPOKANE, Wash. — Worried over the availability and ease of purchase, the Spokane City Council has the city attorney looking into exactly what the law says about taser use. When the attorney brings those finding to the council August 22, they'll decide what can be done, that could include stiffer penalties and even a limit on where tasers can be sold.

Just the sound of one is intimidating and while these electronic devices are made to protect some people are concerned the taser can easily be used to harm.

 “They are being sold all over town and not even in stores sometimes a lot of times they are on the streets being sold,” Spokane City council member Bob Apple said. Read more.

Would you like to own a taser?

Anyone who has ever raised a piddling puppy knows how important it is to praise the brainless little yapper on those rare occasions when it does the right thing. So I’d like to say the following to the Spokane City Council: “You’re a goood Council. Yes you are. Yessss you are. You’re a very gooood Council. Dougie loves you. Yes he does. He really does. Goood JOB!!!” (I know. That’s embarrassing. But it’s always essential to speak down to the critter’s level of understanding.) Anyway, the council deserves positive reinforcement for not going along with an idiot proposal to up the fines on parking violations from $15 to 25 smackeroos/Doug Clark, SR. More here.

Question: Have you gotten a parking ticket in the last year?