Shawn Vestal

If you have to be hauled before a judge for sentencing, try to schedule it after an election. New research shows that Washington judges are more likely to throw the book at criminals in the weeks before they’re in an election, suggesting that they respond, consciously or not, to the public’s strong preference for tough sentences.

If only those 20 children had been armed. If only those children had been trained and licensed in conceal and carry, then maybe there would have been a way to avoid a mass shooting at an elementary school.

Story time? Really, Councilman Fagan? The next time you hear the government-phobes launch the script about crushing taxes and runaway waste, remember Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan and his insights into the city’s library system, offered during the passionate debate Monday night about the city’s budget.

Judi Carl’s phone rang not long after midnight on Nov. 26. A man was holed up inside his home following a family argument that had turned violent. He was reportedly drunk and had fired a gun. His wife and son had fled. Patrol officers had surrounded the home and attempted to talk to the man, with no success.

The headline in the latest Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report looks like cause for alarm: “Neo-Nazi Builds North Idaho Compound to Replace Defunct Aryan Nations”

It’s beginning to smell a lot like Christmas. Pine, cinnamon, gingerbread, mulled wine, roasting chestnuts – all the sensory cues that strap us to the mast of seasonal nostalgia. Retailers, hoping to nudge us toward purchase, will mist us with the stuff, through HVAC systems and scent diffusers, but stores often deploy scent and other “peripheral cues” rather clumsily: If it smells “good,” the thinking goes, it will prompt people to buy.

Are we all full up on “revenue” here in Washington? Is our problem – as the unending cliché goes – a spending one, and not a revenue one? As we head toward another budget bloodbath, with Gov.-elect Jay Inslee pledging to defend our collective top priority of never raising a tax, it’s an open question. Budget hawks like to contend that the problem with state government is one of utter spendthriftiness, a failure to properly corral the abundance of money flowing into the state coffers.

The no-new-taxes pledge seems to be losing its juice in Congress. Is it losing its juice with our congresswoman? Yes. No. Maybe.

Sleep in. Stay home. Take the dog for a walk. Read a book. Watch TV. Pick hunks of turkey off the carcass, standing in the kitchen in your sock feet, fridge door open.

Ten years ago this month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was considering the approval of aggressive interrogation techniques for “high-value detainees” being held at Guantanamo Bay. The techniques had roots in the survival school training conducted at Fairchild Air Force Base and elsewhere, where service members are taught to resist the worst the enemy might do. The methods became the foundation for an interrogation program that proceeded, sometimes officially, sometimes not, through various incarnations of the “war on terror”: from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib.

Here’s where we stand, in terms of policing the police: One of the most hopeful signs about the latest proposal for true independent oversight is that it’s all bark and no bite. That’s right. All bark and no bite – that’s the selling point.

How much time should Karl Thompson spend in prison? How much would be “sufficient but not greater than necessary,” as the law requires?

As the city scrambles for nickels and dimes everywhere – well, everywhere but certain top salaries – it seems odd that the administration is forking over nearly $50,000 to quietly hire a communications consultant. The Condon administration has signed a $45,900 contract with Desautel Hege Communications, the marketing and communications firm, to see if the city can improve how it speaks to citizens. The amount of money is eyebrow-raising, since it is the exact maximum for no-bid contracts – and pretty close to the amount that would require a City Council vote. It also comes at the very moment when staffing levels in crucial public services are being proposed for big cuts in the mayor’s budget.

It’s too bad that the time most ripe for optimism and enthusiasm regarding democracy and citizenship – elections – is so persistently darkened by cynicism. It’s too bad, but not surprising or unfounded. One of the chief failures of our public life is the failure of frankness, and it’s widespread, and it causes an entirely reasonable loss of faith in the whole enterprise.