Cop killer Maurice Clemmons, as cold-blooded and ruthless as his crimes were, is not reason enough to change the state’s criminal justice laws.

Big Brother would be offended to know he’s getting credit for something as innocuous and low-tech as Pierce County’s project to find building-permit scofflaws.

Why is it so hard to make a big transportation plan stick in Seattle?

Washington’s public universities can offer low tuition, excellent education and ample financial aid. The problem is, they can’t offer all three at the same time – not now, not during this revenue crisis.

Tonight I said goodbye to four co-workers, four people I have shared my life with over the past year. Cuts and revenue downturns have resulted in layoffs and revisions in our work force. And here I sit, dumbfounded by the realization that I must start again and count my blessings for the job that I have.

WASHINGTON – Repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” might be the right thing to do, but there’s only one reason to do it: military effectiveness.

Anyone sitting in a dank, fetid Haitian jail for any reason probably deserves at least a measure of sympathy, so in that sense I feel sorry for the Baptist missionaries from Idaho charged with kidnapping 33 “orphans” and trying to take them out of the country. But what the do-gooders allegedly did was not just misguided. It could be criminal, and Haitian authorities are right to hold them accountable.

When we sat to watch the Super Bowl on our big flat-screen televisions Sunday, we hoped for a good game and we knew the hi-def picture would be great. What wasn’t so clear to most of us is how much energy those new, bigger televisions consume.

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must the community want for all its children.”

In the last two weeks, President Obama finally proposed tough new restrictions on the big banks, and then he underlined them in his State of the Union speech. It’s a start.

WASHINGTON – The Tea Party activists claimed a huge victory in Massachusetts when Scott Brown, a former Cosmopolitan centerfold driving a pickup, captured the hallowed seat of Ted Kennedy.