What Fate For The Living Dead?

Washington’s Legislature has a new gimmick for professional football: sudden-life overtime.

As the clock was running down on the 1997 session, prospective Seahawks buyer Paul Allen’s bid for a new football stadium in Seattle appeared, more than once, dead.

But when the final gun sounded, the lawmakers hit the showers, leaving it to voters to restore life to the idea or snuff it.

Between now and June 20, a statewide election will be held on whether to spend $300 million in public funds on a stadium that would be built after the current Kingdome (still not paid off) is torn down.

Depending on how you look at it, those public dollars would or wouldn’t take a bite out of the state treasury. Some of the funding package would come from revenues already dedicated to King County. Some would come from taxes assessed only on those who park at and attend events at the new facility. And part of the deal would be a sales-tax break on stadium construction purchases - purchases that won’t be made if the stadium isn’t built.

But some of the revenue would come from new lottery games that would compete with other state lottery games as well as charitable gambling activities.

So, all of us have some thinking to do before election time. What’s the game plan, “Bagpipes” readers? Do we go for the bomb or do we punt?

Remember the Alamo

Another Texas standoff raises the question of how law enforcement officials ought to handle confrontations with anti-government zealots who challenge our basic structure of social order.

When the feds finally moved on the Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas, four years ago, the resulting conflagration cost lives and generated criticism of the U.S. Justice Department.

The feds’ more recent lengthy standoff with Montana’s freemen ended less dramatically but, toward the end, began to produce impatient rumblings from nearby property owners who wondered how long their lives would have to be disrupted.

Now, Joe Rowe, understandably angry at the Republic of Texas gunmen who shot their way into his home, wounded him with flying glass and held him and his wife hostage, also is peeved at law enforcement officials for not responding earlier to complaints about the organization.

What’s an appropriate policy for dealing with those who place their causes above the law?

, DataTimes MEMO: “Bagpipes” appears Tuesdays and Thursdays. To respond, call Cityline at 458-8800, category 9881, from a Touch-Tone phone or send a fax to 459-5098 or e-mail to dougf@spokesman.com. You also can leave Doug Floyd a message at 459-5577, extension 5466.