King County Executive Ron Sims has done just what we’ve feared all along would happen with Sound Transit. With a Seattle-centric view, he has come out against the roads & transit package and contends light-rail shouldn’t be extended to Pierce County. Basically, he’s saying we’ve got the Sounder trains, and that’s good enough. It would consign Pierce County to be an economic backwater for decades and force Pierce County commuters to stick to the highways.

We aren’t big fans of the death penalty, but it’s the law in Washington, where as a practical matter it is carried out only

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Friday is Ask a Stupid Question Day. (I know, I know; there’s no such thing as a stupid question. And if you believe that, you’ve never had to work at an information booth.)

So, if you have a stupid question, post it here. Maybe someone will be able to answer it. Or if you’ve been asked a stupid question, let us hear about it.

Here are two Web sites (click HERE and HERE) with a lot of really good stupid questions. (Hey, I think I’ve wondered about a few of these myself.)

And here are some stupid questions asked of park rangers at some of our national parks (none, unfortunately, in Washington), compiled by Outside magazine.

Grand Canyon National Park
&bull Was this man-made?
&bull Do you light it up at night?
&bull I bought tickets for the elevator to the bottom – where is it?
&bull Is the mule train air conditioned?
&bull So where are the faces of the presidents?

Everglades National Park
&bull Are the alligators real?
&bull Are the baby alligators for sale?

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State lands commissioner Doug Sutherland may have provided campaign fodder for his 2008 election opponent this week.

The candidate likely to be Sutherland’s main Democratic rival, Eastern Washington rancher and environmentalist Peter Goldmark, announced a kickoff campaign tour of the state Thursday and Friday. He called Sutherland, a Republican, "too tied to corporate special interests and selling off our precious public lands for logging and development at pennies on the dollar."

That’s what enviros have been saying for years about Sutherland, a former Tacoma mayor and Pierce County executive. But Sutherland backers recently sent out invitations

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Here’s the latest word from state Rep. Dennis Flannigan on the aftermath of his widely reported (on this blog, at least) catastrophe on the pitcher’s mound at Cheney Stadium:

Friends, Family, and enemies who won’t hurt me:

Many of you know last Wednesday, while pitching in a benefit softball

game I took a  well struck ball in the face. Tooths flew, good people

helped, and I headed to the Tacoma General ER room. They kept me three

hours and sent me on my way with my teeth glued together, and that

there probably

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Bill Gaines, a hometown boy who became Tacoma Power superintendent just a year ago, will move up to Tacoma Public Utilities‘ top job as director.

The Utilities Board announced its choice this evening. Gaines was a top power executive at Seattle City Light when he joined TPU last fall. A Wilson High School graduate, WSU grad and MBA degree-holder from UPS, Gaines spent much of his career as vice president for Puget Sound Energy.

Gaines will replace longtime director Mark Crisson, who is leaving to become the top lobbyist in Washington, D.C., for the public power industry.

A curious side-controversy of the blowup over the “General Betray Us” ad a couple weeks ago had to do with advertising rates.

Republican critics – up to and including Dick Cheney – claimed that The New York Times had given MoveOn a special low price, $64,575, on the full-page ad.”TIMES GIVES LEFTIES A HEFTY DISCOUNT FOR ‘BETRAY US’ AD,” chortled a New York Post headline. The Times denied any such deal.

This week, though, the Times acknowledged that it indeed had undercharged MoveOn to the tune of $77,508, which the Democratic activist group said it has now

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Ron Paul‘s got it made. If campaign signs are any indication, he’s far ahead of the rest of the Republican presidential field – at least in Tacoma.

Look around. How many Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson signs – of any kind – have you seen? Who’s seen even a bumper sticker for Giuliani? But Ron Paul believers make their loyalties known.

The largest signs, home-made jobs, obviously, are usually posted on public property in places not so prominent that they would get removed immediately by the sign police. The one

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Our editorial board doesn’t often do this, but we asked the finalists for the Tacoma City Council At-Large Position 8 seat, David Curry and Marilyn Strickland, to return for a second round of endorsement interviews.

Four strong candidates ran in the August primary. It was such a close call among the four that we agreed to endorse Curry and Strickland. We also agreed that in any case we would ask the two primary winners in this race to return to return for another visit. Only two board members interviewed the four primary contestants, so we wanted the

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