John Webster

While Washington's legislators unpacked, their leaders took a few minutes Tuesday to give journalists a preview of the coming session. They expect to argue about how to cut taxes, how to show their love for schools, how to crack down on crime (again), how to reform welfare and whether to subsidize another new playpen for the poor oppressed millionaires of professional sports. And for the amusement of the media they might even carry on about same-sex marriage. What fun.

If dogs are "man's best friend" and those of us who love them know the title is earned - they need friendship in return. What does it take to be a dog's best friend? The question comes to mind in the aftermath of the appalling story that emerged after police raided a Newport, Wash., puppy mill known as Mountaintop Kennels. There, police found 220 dogs, plus an undetermined number of carcasses. Some living dogs were neglected, hurt or dying, with ears hacked off, fur coated with reeking waste. Complaints from neighbors had prompted the investigation. Police arrested the kennel's owners. Animal lovers went to work finding decent homes for the dogs, which include retrievers, mastiffs and bulldogs.

Perhaps it was only a death rattle of a dying mindset. Yet there was something stunning in the message a coalition of Maryland religious leaders delivered last month. They will not, they told the state's governor, accept a larger role in caring for the poor. The state of Maryland, like many others, hopes churches and synagogues will help as society replaces the old federal welfare programs.

In his first term as speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich was memorable - smashing at traditions, tossing off one-liners calculated to inspire new thinking about government and society, kicking off a new way of governing, reveling in controversy. In his second term, if he has one, Gingrich could grow up and become downright powerful.

In business, if a product doesn't work or a service doesn't satisfy, customers turn away and the business must improve or die. In government, if a program doesn't work or a service doesn't satisfy, it must need a bigger budget. Consider, for example, the state of Washington's attempts to computerize its record-keeping for welfare clients, unemployment benefits and the licensing of motor vehicles and drivers. These should have been simple chores. It is routine, in other realms, for computer database searches to pluck needles from massive haystacks with lightning speed.

He wasn't born in a blue suit. He never made CEO. Why would millions worship him? The Christmas story announces a creator with values foreign to ours. God? In a stable? Destined for a cross? Even theologians tremble at the thought. Yet there is something universal, something like hunger, in the response of every generation to acts of transcendent charity. Consider:

Good for President Clinton. He has challenged Congress to create federal income-tax writeoffs for the cost of getting a college education. Corporations get tax writeoffs when they buy new machines. People ought to get tax writeoffs when they buy the knowledge tools needed for their own and the nation's economic future. Those tools are moving out of reach, for reasons that ought to be a national scandal. Federal tax breaks can be part of the solution.

It took just a half-century to manufacture enough fuel to incinerate life on our planet. Now, only a decade after the production of plutonium ceased, the same nation that launched the nuclear arms race is leading the way to dismantle the weapons and dispose of their fuel. That's a move worth applauding. But here in Eastern Washington, we have been more than bystanders to the nuclear weapons program. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is radioactive proof of technology's capacity to run amok. Fifty years of arrogant nuclear engineering scattered Eastern Washington with fallout and with the contaminated remains of old bomb factories. Plus, the Cold-War culture that plutonium production left behind still inspires occasional persecution of Hanford whistleblowers.

If the gentle reader will forgive the use of an expression much in vogue among TV scriptwriters, their industry's version of a rating system can best be summarized in language the studios will understand: This proposal sucks.

The Spokane area recently got a glimpse of the pioneer days when people lived in closer touch with Mother Earth, and it wasn't pretty. Fireplaces poured soot into the air while families huddled in chilly houses around the smoky light of kerosene lanterns and candles. Our quality of life, including air quality, came a long way in the past century. Smokestacks no longer belch sulfurous fumes. Motor vehicles are cleaner. Visitors to industrial cities of Eastern Europe get a quick, choking reminder of how much progress we have made.

When Americans need a laxative, they don't hike into the forest, peel a cascara tree and chew a fistful of bark; they walk down a drug store aisle and choose from an array of tested and regulated remedies. When Americans have an infection, they don't eat moldy soup from the back of the refrigerator. They go to the pharmacy and get a purer form of penicillin - or a newer, specialized antibiotic. So why would Americans consider marijuana smoking as a way to relieve certain miseries of AIDS, chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis and other ills?

Three 16-year-old boys have pleaded guilty to felony vandalism charges for spray-painting gang symbols on more than 50 buildings in north Spokane. What should Juvenile Court do? Present the poor, misunderstood little dears with an apology for infringing on their freedom of speech? No way.

One of the most powerful political influence groups in this or any other state - the teacher union - stands accused of violating campaign finance laws. Will Washington state officials find the courage to prosecute? It takes a bold politician to bite the hand that feeds campaigns.

By the time this editorial appears in print, perhaps the power will be on and the heroes who restored it will be at home, enjoying a well-deserved rest with their loved ones. There is much to honor and celebrate about the way our community has rallied to the crisis of its most damaging ice storm in memory. At the top of the list are the hard-hatted laborers who worked day and night clearing debris, splicing power lines and replacing transformers under bone-chilling, life-threatening conditions. Yet as the struggle dragged on, in the back of many minds a question grew - and it wasn't just a result of justifiable grouchiness. Even though we all realize that very unusual weather was the primary cause of our misery, it is natural to ask, and important to ask, whether matters within human control made the crisis worse. If the answer is yes the community can learn, change, improve.

The balanced budget amendment is a feel-good gimmick. Its popularity among conservatives shows they've been hanging around liberals so long they swallowed one of liberalism's snake-oil cures: the belief any problem will go away if the law bans it, regulates it and hems it in with process reforms.

Whatever Spokane County commissioners decide in the coming weeks, this community will be fighting about growth management for years. As well it should. What's at stake is local quality of life, now in jeopardy due to serious traffic bottlenecks, the result of suburban sprawl and the underfunding of road improvements.

The health insurance industry came face-to-face with millions of outraged customers the other day, and it blinked. Good idea. On the surface, the question was whether women should be required to go home, bound in bandages and carrying their drainage tubes, on the same day they have a mastectomy. That's an explosive proposition, given the traumatic nature of a breast removal plus the sudden, terrifying cancer diagnosis that precedes it.

The first night, it was an adventure. Light candles, play cards, talk, read a book, enjoy the silence. No TVs. No stereos. No bleeping computers. Just life, shared with those who make it worthwhile. The first morning, people emerged blinking from their cold and darkened homes, staring in amazement at the fallen wires and splintered trees, sheathed in ice, dazzling in the sun. Instinctively, folks who barely know their neighbors began to work together on a massive cleanup chore.

Spokane police have won widespread praise by enlisting the whole community in the war on crime. Neighborhood-oriented officers and "cop shops" strengthen the ties that prevent crime and catch suspects. Trained volunteers perform low-risk chores so police can concentrate on duties with greater risk and urgency. But now, in the worst traditions of work-rule unionism, the Spokane Police Guild has ruptured the spirit of cooperation. It has charged the city with an unfair labor practice, protesting the civilian "ambassadors" who walk downtown streets.

Egad. "Publish or perish," the rule that determines whether college faculty members receive tenure and promotions, is in jeopardy. According to The New York Times, the publishing houses that print academic dissertations are cutting way back on the number of new books issued. This leaves would-be professors in a quandary: How can they get a job without a book on their resumes?

The Pacific Northwest's electricity source is going to change. The only question is whether it will change in a way beneficial to those who live here. A little-noted but extremely important battle will determine the outcome. It's being waged before an obscure committee whose discussions center on issues of eye-glazing complexity.

The most insidious pollution in the United States doesn't come from smokestacks. It comes from the entertainment industry. It comes from sicko "artists" who contend Americans have a duty not only to tolerate their bilge but also to buy it. Wrong. Freedom of speech creates a right to offer a noxious message. But it creates no duty to buy, sell or approve. Toleration loses both dignity and virtue if it leads the liberal-minded to bless the socially destructive.

Technology can flash words around the world but it can't make the words true. That's a timely lesson, for a culture infatuated with the Internet. It's a lesson learned the hard way by one who might have known better: retired ABC newsman Pierre Salinger.

When Spokane voters rejected a bond issue that would have rebuilt their crumbling arterials, the decision did keep down property taxes. But it didn't end the city's duty to keep up the streets. So what are city administrators doing, proposing a 3-cent increase in property tax rates, to cover street maintenance? They are doing their job.