It looks like someone is actually checking up on how compliance is going with the new smoking ban. Perhaps not surprisingly, it isn't a state agency doing the checking, but a news organization. From Blogger KING:

“As far as enforcement goes, it’s a joke, the way it’s done,” said Dixon. The Lacey businessman echoes what many officials from health to police to prosecutors have told me: nobody wants to do the chore of enforcement.

Dixon is more blunt. Enforcing the ban is “the bastard child of the different departments. No one wants it,” he said. As far as that nearly perfect compliance rate goes, Dixon said, “That’s BS.”

From The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

WASHINGTON, DC—A Gallup/Harris Interactive poll released Monday indicates that nearly nine out of 10 Americans are "tired of having a country."

[snip]

"I already belong to a health club, a church, and the Kiwanis Club," Tammy Golden of Los Angeles wrote. "I'm a member of the Von's Grocery Super Savers, which gets me a discount on certain groceries. These are all well-managed organizations with real benefits. None of them send me a confusing bill once a year and make me work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I get it wrong."

Olympia, WA student Helen Berg expressed frustration with the country's voting process.

"I was gonna vote, but it rained," Berg wrote. "It wasn't for the president anyway, so what difference does it make? The president is the only one that matters, and you don't even get to vote for him."

Via Poke the Kitty -- She Likes It.

Peace Rally – Saturday, March 18th

Downtown Olympia – Noon to 1:00

The 3rd Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion

Stand up to stop the killing & bring our troops home!

“Line the Street from the Bridge to the Fountain

Dr. Mitchell Thomashow, who has chaired the Environmental Studies Department in the Antioch New England Graduate School for several decades, will lecture on "The Future of Environmental Studies."

Dr. Thomashow is a national leader in environmental studies. The Antioch New England environmental studies program, where he is chair, is outstanding and very extensive. Furthermore, Dr. Thomashow will be moving to Unity College in Maine this year to become its President. Unity College has a reputation for being the most or at least one of the most environmentally oriented colleges in the country (link).

Dr. Thomashow is the author of two recent books, Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change (MIT Press, 2003) and Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist (MIT Press, 1995), along with numerous articles. If you would like more information on Dr. Thomashow, please take a look at his web site (link).

From TheNewsTribune.com:

The beer board, approved last week by the state Legislature, seeks to bring together the 80 or so Washington breweries that produce up to 100,000 barrels a year and develop marketing plans to get the word out to beer drinkers worldwide.

[snip]

To fund the commission’s work, beermakers must agree to tax themselves 10 cents per barrel up to 10,000 barrels, or $1,000.

Not all brewers are on board.

Fish Brewing Company in Olympia brews about 8,000 barrels a year, which means the new tax will cost it about $800 for promotion and marketing the company already does for itself.

“This is a typical evil-empire move,” said Lyle Morse, president of Fish Brewing Company in Olympia.

Morse is concerned the new state beer board will benefit only the larger brewers, such as Pyramid Brewing in Seattle.

“This beer commission means diddly squat to us,” Morse said, “and it’s just another thing to tax us on.”