[via omjp]

Press Release: April 12, 2006

Judge declared mistrial in trial of four peace activists in Kitsap County Court for a demonstration at the Trident nuclear submarine base.

On Wednesday afternoon, April 12, Judge Daniel Phillips in Kitsap County District Court in Port Orchard, declared a mistrial in the trial of four peace activists. The four were charged with failure to disperse.

The four were charged for a demonstration on the morning of August 8, 2005, in which 19 demonstrators blocked the highway entrance to the Bangor Trident submarine base with a long banner that stated, “We Can All Live Without Trident.

From The Girl Gets Away:

Gauging from my own experience in bars, the Washington State smoking ban has been a great success. However, a situation in which most people are happy with the results of a ballot measure for which most people voted makes for a slow news day, so instead we get stories like this.

In the four months since the state banned smoking in public places, this is how the ban has affected local restaurants and bars:

• Forced the owner of a 70-year-old Olympia cafe to put his business up for sale.
• Helped business soar at a Northeast Seattle brew pub by attracting new customers who come for a smoke-free meal.
• Driven away so many regulars at an Everett bar that the owner laid off two bartenders.

The effects of the ban seem to vary widely. In some upscale Seattle bars, the ban has attracted new, nonsmoking customers. But owners of some blue-collar neighborhood joints say their business has fallen by half.

Obviously, the smoking ban is an example of liberal elitists pushing their nonsmoking agenda onto blue-collar neighborhoods, trying to replace gin joints with brew pubs, and opponents of the smoking ban have the hard data to prove it.

The overall impact on businesses statewide is difficult to judge. The state Department of Revenue said it won't be able to determine whether restaurants and bars have suffered until it gets taxpayer data for the first quarter of this year.

Oh wait. No they don’t. They’re just guessing. In the meantime, no effort should be spared in implying that this public health issue is actually a matter of class warfare.

Go Read more.

Where are all the women bloggers? Conferences on blogging used to ask that, if they even noticed. Not so anymore, we are all over the place and always were. Easy and fun to blog here locally on Oly Blog. 

BlogHer is a great resource for women and men are welcome also. I encourage women to set up blogs here at Oly Blog, work up their own blogs elsewhere, and join in on BlogHer. Room for everyone.

• Empires Fall: Thirteen Physicists Warn Bush of Nuclear Horrors
  

  Well, this is good. The Preznit needs to hear from people from all walks of life.

  I don't think the fact that some fizzists are writing him is going to have much effect on him directly, because he gets his orders from Gawd, or from Exxon, depending on whose share price is higher on any given day.

  But it's going to make him look like an ignorant, warmongering yokel.

  I don't know if that's a good thing. I'm kind of thinking it may just endear him even more to his base.

• Peregrinate: Afterlands
  

  I just finished Afterlands, a wonderful novel by Steven Heighton, a poet and novelist. It’s a beautifully-written account of a disastrous expedition to the Arctic and the aftermath of those struggles in the lives of three of the participants. It weaves an incredible and true story of survival, adrift on a chunk of ice through an Arctic winter, into a brilliant imagining of those events and what they created for the survivors. The author tells the events while pulling them through a mesh of conflicts between cultures, languages, nationalisms, class, and more personal commitments.

• Ignite Revival: Jesus Arrives!
  

  On Palm Sunday April 9, 2006 at 7 PM we will launch 24 hour prayer on our new church property in Olympia, WA. We will be praying for revival to ignite in Olympia and spread across the USA. We will begin posting regular reports of what the Holy Spirit is doing as we pray. We will be praying for our nation, our youth, our leaders and the pre-Christians that will be saved through our prayers. Will you commit to pray? Email igniterevival@livingwater.com to register and join us April 9th at 7 PM on the land for Orientation, Worship and Prayer!