The Political Desk: Judgement Day

So, State Supreme Court Judges. We have one open slot  with multiple candidates this time, as Susan Owen must retire since she is over 75 (yes, we do that out here). Four contenders, each with their own take. All sound like solid, professional folks. Their write-ups are in the Voters guide, but Crosscut summarizes that and add material from other sources and their own interviews.

(And this is where I once regret the loss of Voting for Judges site and the Municipal League. Ah, well.)

OK, one more thing - if one candidate gets 50% plus, the get the job. No playoff round. But this time, given four candidates, that's unlikely. Here goes:

Todd A. Bloom comes out of private practice with 20+ years of experience and ten years as a tax attorney. He's running with the encouragement of the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors. He didn't respond to Crosscut's questions. 

Sal Mungia is a litigator with 40+years of experience, and a lot of backing - 8 of the 9 current current justices, Gov. Inslee, the Stranger, and Candidate Bob Ferguson. He's successfully pitched changes to the state's jury selection process. He's got an impressive resume and an embarrassing amount of cash.

David R. Shelvey has the least experience of the group with 9 years as a lawyer and come primarily from the business side, as well as a radio personality. In his bio, he also mentions double-checking with God before making decisions.

Dave Larson comes from the Judge-side of the equation, with 16 years as a judge and 23 years as a trial attorney. He believes strongly is therapeutic sentencing, and many of the reforms have been made into law from the bench. 

Four pretty solid candidates, with a low (mostly) percentage of dog whistles. I would like to have to make the choice between Sal Mungia and Dave Larsen this fall. But force me into a corner, and I'll go with Sal Mungia.

And that wraps up my ballot. I will post a summary, and after the primary, post the results.

More later, 

The Political Desk - Book of Judges

Usually I put the judgeships later in the list, and give people a good nod to Voting for Judges, which collects endrosements and statements on the candidates, and does a good job for the people of Washington. But there is only one big Judgeship - Court of Appeals, Division No. 1, District No. 1, and it should be an obvious choice, but for one interesting facet.

The incumbent is Michael S. Spearman, who looks good and has a great record and endorsements from all over the legal place. His opponent, though, is Nathan W. S. Choi, and while Mr. Choi may not have the depth of background, experience, and endorsements of Mr. Spearman, he has come up with a surprising amount of financial support. I am making this assumption purely from the plethora of full-color yard signs that have appeared throughout the region, and, much to my surprise, on signboards (ranging from the A-frame types you see in front of coffee houses to constructed wooden ones) that have popped up downtown (where there are not a lot of yards) like dandelions after a rain. Someone has thrown some serious coin in this race.

Nevertheless. Michael S. Spearman is the better candidate, so I am strongly endorsing him.

We have a couple local municipal judge positions down here in Kent as well, but both Karli Kristine Jorgensen and Glenn M. Phillips are running unopposed. Congratulations to both on their successful employee review.

More later,

White Out

No, I'm not talking about the upcoming Megastorm about to hit Seattle, but about SOPA and PIPA.

SOPA is a bill in the US House. It stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. PIPA is a similar bill in the Senate, and is short of PROTECT IP Act, which in turn is short for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Threat of Intellectual Property Act. I swear, there's a job in Washington for coming up with names like this to provide cover to bills like these.

I'd normally send you to Wikipedia to learn about these bills, but Wikipedia is down for the day, in protest. So are some other sites. And if you scan down this page, you'll see a whole lot of nothing (I hope - I just set the text to white against a white background). Because that's the direction these bills will take us.

These bills, despite their cute names, do not protect content creators, but rather further empower content owners, a different class of beast, and gives them greater control over the Internet you enjoy. So here's what you'll get once bills like these become law. A whole lotta nothing.

More (maybe) later,

Update: And we're back up. Future readers will wonder what this is all about, but for one day, I whited out all the body copy on my site in protest of a horrible pair of proposed laws - SOPA and PIPA (as noted above). Now, I was not alone in this - a few other sites like Wikipedia and Reddit went blank, along with a lot of personal sites. And the interesting thing was that the bulk of the sites doing this were content creators - supposedly the very people these laws were (on paper) to protect. Google gave a strong head-nod. Twitter and Facebook noted it all, but stayed open, allowing the entire 'net to compare notes.

And this thing is, it was fairly successful. A lot of congressmen came out against the bill. Some of them were the original backers. A couple admitted that they hadn't read the damned things but were assured that it would be a good thing. The president has come down on it. Not bad for a buncha nerds.

Oh, and the spokesperson for the Motion Picture Association of American, a former congress-critter himself, complained, without a sense of irony, that everyone taking their free information off the 'net was an 'abuse of power'.Like having ten films up for "best picture" isn't.

This isn't over - not by a long shot. They are already talking bout floating this bill later once the heat is off, or it showing up later under an even cuter acronym (Freedom Respecting Every Action and Knowledge). And our Supreme Court just declared that stuff out of copyright can regrow its copyright (though not necessarily under the original owners). There's going to be a lot more of this going on as we go forward. But for the moment, this has to go down as a win.

More (definitely) later