The student senator on the show defending the decision to vote it down couldn't answer the straight-forward question of whether or not World War II was a noble cause. He kept trying to play the historical, If "A" Happened, It Would Have Prevented "B" Without "C" Happening Game. It's a fun game to play when you're in an upper-division lecture, not when you're trying to explain why the US was in the wrong during one of the more easily justified conflicts the US has seen.

Scarbarough even admitted Dresden was probably a mistake but that no conflict is perfect and that the losses at cities like Dresden were part of a bigger picture.

Wall Street Journal: Opinion Journal:

Digging themselves in deeper, the student opponents of the memorial indicated: "We don't need to honor any more rich white males." Other opponents compared Boyington's actions during World War II with murder.

As for the sin of honoring a rich white male, Mr. Ludeman points out that Boyington (who died in 1988) was neither rich nor white. He happened to be a Sioux Indian, who wound up raising his three children as a single parent. "Colonel Boyington is luckily not around to see how ignorant students at his alma mater can be today," says Kirby Wilbur, a morning talk show host at Seattle's KVI Radio. Perhaps the trustees and alumni of the school will now help educate them.

From Ralph Kinney Bennett, former Assistant Managing Editor at The Reader's Digest:

If you are an alumnus of UW, you should be pissed or ashamed or both.

If you are not an alumnus you should at least be embarrassed at the fact that this kind of "thinking" is too, too normal from the present generation of college students (and professors) all over this country.

New York Times:

In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes.

Seldom has a Supreme Court decision sparked such an immediate legislative reaction, and one that scrambles the usual partisan lines. Condemnation of the ruling came from black lawmakers representing distressed urban districts, from suburbanites and from Western property-rights absolutists who rarely see eye to eye on anything. Lawmakers from Maine to California have introduced dozens of bills in reaction to the ruling, most of them saying that government should never seize private homes or businesses solely to benefit a private developer, no matter what compensation is paid.

I thought it was ironic the article also pointed out the New London project, from which all of this stems, is "on hold" in part due to the "unwillingness to forcibly remove the homeowners who sued to save their properties." Evidently, people still do have a heart.

Photos and description of the fallen American Elm tree in Sylvester Park really cannot do the scene justice. Definitely go see it for yourselves.

Performs Saturday March 4

to Benefit Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation

Tom Rawson, a banjo-playing, crowd-delighting folksinger, performs on Saturday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. at Plenty! Restaurant on the corner of 4th and Columbia in downtown Olympia. The event will benefit the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s work for peace, social justice and nonviolence.

Rawson has charmed and invigorated audiences throughout the Pacific Northwest with his infectious wit, energy and songs that “you just can’t resist singing along with.

The Olympian:

SPOKANE, Wash. — The state's tough new anti-smoking law has an unlikely opponent: a retired doctor who argues the ban is forcing elderly smokers in nursing homes to take unnecessary risks.

This was, by far, the best part of the story:

He said it's irksome to be told you can't smoke in your own home, and those who penned the clean indoor air initiative "ought to be shot.'' But he's willing to negotiate.