This editorial will appear in Friday’s print edition.

True to form, some weed heads hailed the arrival of legal marijuana Thursday by breaking the law that legalized it.

Initiative 502, which took effect Thursday, allows legal possession of up to an ounce of cannabis but forbids smoking it (or otherwise displaying) it in public. That didn’t slow down the crowds of jubilant tokers who jointly lit up in front of cameras in a public park – Seattle Center – the moment I-502 kicked in at midnight.

No surprise: Dope-smokers are not renowned for respecting drug laws.

Nor are the Seattle’s City Council and its city attorney, Pete Holmes, whose attitudes reflect a marijuana-friendly city. Taking their cues from the top, the Seattle Police Department has announced it has no plans to issue the citations for the open-air consumption that is explicitly forbidden under I-502.

Seattle may be OK with public pot parties, but blowing smoke at the TV cameras does no favors to I-502 statewide.
Read more »

This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.

An uncooperative economy has stymied many a big plan for Tacoma’s Foss Waterway. But there’s something to be said for holding your own.

A good example is the prospect of hanging on to Johnny’s Seafood Co., a quintessentially Tacoma business on the east side of the Foss.

The company at one point had been on the brink of packing up and moving to a strip mall in Fife. Now, through a transaction engineered by the Foss Waterway Development Authority, the declining property will be rehabilitated and kept up by Johnny’s parent company, …

Read more »

This editorial will appear in Wednesday’s print edition.

Most children face obstacles enough in life. Obesity – a preventable problem – shouldn’t be among them.

The Pierce County Health Department, YMCA, MultiCare and other community organizations deserve credit for their attack on childhood obesity, an epidemic of epic proportions in the United States.

Obesity isn’t merely being overweight; it’s being so overweight that grave problems are likely to arise from it – including heart disease, diabetes and, not least, bullying from classmates.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the rate of obesity among 6- to 11-year-olds rose from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 20 percent in 2008. Among 12- to 19-year-olds, the rate went from 5 percent to 18 percent. There’s no reason to think kids have gotten skinnier in the last four years.

Two factors are driving the trend: Eating junk and staring at screens. Fast food, snacks and sugary drinks pump the calories into them. The calories get packed away as fat when children spend hours a day parked in front of video games, television and computers.

Blame adults for most of this. They control what young children eat and how much time they spend gaping at pixels. In Washington, according to the CDC, roughly a third of all children aged 6 to 17 have televisions in their bedrooms. More than half of all high schools and middle schools provide ready access to high-calorie drinks and snacks during school hours.

A lot of these kids simply have the deck stacked against them.

But don’t underestimate the counter-attack. In the South Sound, a small host of organizations has been pushing back, often in close coordination.
Read more »

This editorial will appear in Tuesday’s print edition.

When you hear the word “mail,” do you think of what you read online or of what the U.S. Postal Service delivers? If you’re like most Americans, you’re more likely to communicate via email than to sit down and write snail mail.

But hackers can break into personal email accounts – and so can law enforcement. Investigators who want to read traditional correspondence must get a search warrant; for email at least 180 days old, police need only subpoena Internet service providers.

Subpoenas are easy to come by. Getting one requires only …

Read more »

This editorial will appear in Monday’s print edition.

Some Arabs hate Israel for merely existing. Many more chiefly hate its often roughshod treatment of Palestinians.

Nothing exemplifies the Israeli government’s arrogance more than its obsessive expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The only conceivable peace between Israelis and Arabs will require an independent Palestinian nation in those areas. Yet Israel’s ruling Likud Party seems bent on salting Palestinian territory with hostile Jewish enclaves, a practice that antagonizes the entire Muslim world and Israel’s chief ally, the United States.

Now, by the day, Israel’s neighborhood is quickly turning more dangerous.

A week and a half after the cease-fire in Gaza, Hamas is probably already restocking its missile arsenal. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is tightening its grip on Egypt. Turkey, once a reliable and powerful friend of Israel, has aligned itself with Hamas.

The Likud government, in its wisdom, has chosen this moment to expand the settlements. On Friday, it loudly approved construction of 3,000 new Jewish homes in Palestinian territory. It also announced a zoning process for approving settlements in a section of East Jerusalem critical to Palestinian statehood.

At times like this, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Likud officials look as pathologically foolish as their worst enemies.
Read more »

This editorial will appear in Sunday’s print edition.

A lawsuit filed last week in federal district court by four military women highlights
the disconnect between the roles the Pentagon allows them to fill and the ones they actually fill when deployed in combat zones.

The four women all performed combat roles in Iraq or Afghanistan. Two received Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in combat. But because they’re technically prohibited from serving in combat, they likely will not have the same opportunities for advancement in their military careers as the men they served with.

Women are so integrated into a variety of roles in the military and the nature of war has changed so much in recent years that they often find themselves in the kind of “direct” combat situations they’re not supposed to be in according to Pentagon rules.
Read more »

Taking the most expensive corporate-financed junket anyone can remember isn’t corrupt behavior, exactly, but it’s not the kind of thing you do if you feel accountable to the public.

McDermott, a very liberal Democrat from the very liberal 7th Congressional District, won re-election Nov. 6 with 80 percent of the vote. Competition is essential in politics. McDermott at least needed a very liberal challenger.

Since 2000, we’ve reserved a spot on our Monday opinion pages for contributions from a selected panel of four to six local reader columnists. Now it’s time to invite readers to apply for our 2013 roster of guest writers.

We are looking for contributors who represent the diversity of South Sound residents – urban, suburban and rural, young, old and in between.

To apply, submit two fresh sample columns (not previously written material), each 500 to 700 words. Include a cover letter that includes your phone number and tells us a bit about yourself. Read more »