Don’t let the water run. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Close the door behind you so you don’t let the heat out — All things most of us have heard from our parents (in my family, my dad was the Therm-o-stat hall monitor) since an early age.

So if these common energy-savings tips were engraved into our malleable young minds, why is it still so difficult for most of us to grasp the urgency of a major climate consensus?

President Obama just returned from Copenhagen, Denmark from a 193-country climate summit. The main topic discussed? Innovative ways to combat climate change and prevent Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees (Celsius) by 2050.

In the end, Obama, along with leaders from China, India, Brazil and South Africa vowed to decrease CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases, and provide $30 billion of emergency aid over the next three years to help poorer nations do the same.

What these so-called progressive leaders signed (the accord was only three pages long with 12 paragraphs), however, was by no means a binding agreement. The “Copenhagen Accord” is a political contract, not a legal contract.

Essentially, it’s a hand shake. A cross-my-heart-hope-die promise that could be broken without too much repercussions.

Driving around Seattle in the cold and rain, dipping an occasional tire into the various crevasses marking many city streets, I have one word for incoming Mayor Mike McGinn: potholes!!!
The new mayor has been working diligently on his transition, naming some good people to certain jobs - way to go selecting Mark Matassa as new communications director - but I wonder if McGinn has had time to decide how he will approach this one undeniable measure of livability.
Outgoing Mayor Greg Nickels took pothole patching to new heights, starting his first term with a website that announced the number of potholes filled in a given period of time, much like McDonald's hamburger sold sign.
McGinn is not responsible for the potholes motorists have encountered lately, for example, the humdinger on Boren Avenue or the craters plural on South Horton St. east of the stadiums. But within 10 days he will own them all.

When is it justified to put a political leader up against the wall and have him shot? We don't do that in America, and that is fine; I am not advocating it. But there are other nations and other circumstances. I'm thinking of Romania. On Christmas Day, 1989--20 years ago Friday. On that day, the dictator of communist Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were taken to a kind of revolutionary tribunal, tried for two hours, put up agains a wall, and summarily executed. Romania was the last of the Eastern European communist states to fall, and the most violent.

The other communist states didn't kill their leaders. The Romanians did. The dictatorship there was particularly harsh, and personal. It was a North Korean kind of place--one in which you could imagine power being handed down in a family, unlike the apparatchik communism of Poland or East Germany. In the Romanian case it was notable that they executed not only Ceausescu but his wife.

There is a famous clip of Ceausescu, here, beginning a speech in Bucharest to a huge crowd Dec. 21, 1989, believing them under control, then being overwhelmed by a rising tide of voices. There is no video of his execution. There was supposed to be, but apparently the soldiers started shooting as soon as he was against the wall, and the cameraman wasn't ready. Such enthusiasm!

Were the Romanians right to execute the Ceausescus? I can't condemn them for what they did. It was a lawless act, but it was a lawless couple who had a lawless regime. The regime had fallen, but only for four days, and the people who held the Ceausescus must have worried that political change wouldn't be permanent until they had guaranteed it. Some of them might have remembered that when the Communists seized power in Russia, and found themselves in a civil war between "Red" and "White" armies, they executed Czar Nicholas II, his wife and children. There would be no restoration of the Romanovs.

Nor of the Ceausescus. Merry Christmas to the Romanians, who earned the right to be free of tyranny.

The sanctions on Iran make little sense. Sanctions rarely get a country to do anything that it believes to be against its interests. They have not moved the governments of Cuba or North Korea. Liberals often argue that the U.S. sanctions on South Africa led to the end of apartheid, but in my reading of it, sanctions were a minor influence. The whites gave up in South Africa because the white leader, F.W. de Klerk, saw that it was in the whites’ interest to reach a deal, and because the imprisoned black leader, Nelson Mandela, was willing to deal with him. It came down to the reasonableness of two men.

Sanctions are economic. And political leaders do not give away important political goals for economic gain.

I attended a forum Dec. 16 at Town Hall organized by opponents of sanctions. There were three speakers: Muhammad Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering at the University of California; Ian Lustick, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Keith Weissman, former deputy director of AIPAC, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

If Seattle Public Schools is serious about introducing body-mass-index assessments into the district's physical-education program for students, then I suggest the adults lead by example. Start with district administrators and school board members, and do the math. Next, rate the faculty.

If the insinuation found by dividing height into weight is useful, the value is reinforced by involving educational leaders and role models. Check out this link for a calculator and index rating. Brace yourself for the results. My number converts to an illegal speed on most residential streets.

Turning the number into a teachable moment means teachers who talk the talk, and not waddle the walk. Remember those bygone days when a student passing the teachers' lounge as the door opened, was hit by a wall of cigarette smoke? So much for all the tobacco-free talk in health class.

Maybe the grownups could wear their numbers as a constructive symbol of work in progress, with step raises linked to time on the StairMaster.

I suspect BMI is a fad that will fade along with exercising to "Go you Chicken Fat go."

Civil disagreements, with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times editorial board, is a weekly feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Here Lynne and Bruce argue about whether educators should aim for a world of college for all.

Lynne Varner, left, and Bruce Ramsey

Bruce Ramsey: Lynne, you refer in your column about the “not-everyone-needs-to-go-to-college crowd.” That includes me.

My ire is for the “every-child-can-learn” crowd. I suppose every child can learn something, but that’s not what that slogan means. In the Seattle Schools, the idea is to make every child ready to graduate from high school and go to college, including community college, if he or she wants to. Given that the actual graduation rate, including dropouts, is in the mid-60 percents, a goal of 100 percent is fantasy.

Intelligence comes on a bell curve. Half of all kids are below average. They may be strong or good-looking or fleet of foot or good citizens, but they’re just not smart. This doesn't mean the schools can't do more for many of them. There are some kids who now fail to learn quadratic equations and plane geometry could learn these things if they had a better teacher, more supportive parents, a stronger dose of will power or maybe even another program funded by federal grants. Push hard and maybe you raise the graduation rate to 70 percent or 74 percent. If you lower the standard, maybe you get 85 percent. But there is no way to reach 100 percent without throwing out the standards entirely.

You tell me President Obama wants to have every kid have at least one year of college. This is nuts squared and foolishness cubed. College is too hard for most kids. If you make them go there, you’ll have to Mickey Mousify the classes for them. And that's not college.
Lynne Varner: College is too hard for which kids Bruce? Certainly not yours nor mine. Most people reading this blog would take umbrage at the notion that a person with normal intellect (i.e. no cognitive disabiliies) could not after 12 years of primary school, eke out a year or two at a university or trade school.

Your bell curve theory sounds racy and slightly intellectual, but really we're not talking about intelligence here. We're talking about the ability to be curious and exhibit that curiosity in an academic setting. If your brain works you can do this.

President Obama's challenge ought to be cheered frankly by every person who has ever criticized public assistance or the unemployed. You want people to get off the public dole? Ensure the upcoming generation has the smarts and the skills to fend for themselves in a global economy. Otherwise you're setting people up for failure as you prepare to take potshots at them for failing.

It is a false argument that in order for the masses to be educated, we have to dumb down education. No, we just have to do a better job of it and make it affordable and accessible.

When you and I are looking in the mailbox for our Social Security checks - long since directly deposited in accounts we will have trouble remembering the pin number for - we'll both quietly praise the value this country placed on education because it allowed the future generation to pay for our dotage.

This story, about Iran arresting U.S. hikers, is a repeat of a thing that has been going on too long. Here are these three Americans--Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, setting off on a hike in Iraq and walking into Iran and getting arrested for "espionage." I assume they are not spies--would the CIA send people into Iran as hikers?--and that they are in that sense, innocent. I also assume that Iran knows this, and that they are trying them to make a political point and to have leverage with the United States, and that they will convict them and then exchange them for some concession from our government.

What I can't join in is any outpouring of sympathy for Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, and the condemnation of the Iranian government. Iran's government is not the sort I want to live under, but it is not my government. It's their government. It's a government sensitive to its borders--over sensitive from the American point of view, but it is entirely within its rights to arrest Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal and put them on trial.

My annoyance is at Americans who think because they are backed by the most powerful government in the world, and they have Human Rights, they can go for a jolly, healthful and invigorating hike on the Iranian border or on the North Korean border or swim across the lake in Burma to see Aung San Suu Kyi, or cross some other forbidden line. To think and act this way is to be a damn fool, and I think more Americans ought to say so.

People make grand statements about economics that aren’t true, or that are only true in a narrower sense than they think. One that I hear is, “America doesn’t make anything anymore.” In fact, as the chart at Economistblog shows, the value of American manufactures has been going up for years. It’s true that Americans buy more than they sell, and that the trade deficit has persisted for years. But to say America has given up manufacturing is silly. It’s not even close to the facts.

Civil disagreements, with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times editorial board, is a weekly feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Here Lynne and Bruce argue about whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went too far in comparing Republican opponents of his health insurance bill to the apologists for slavery.

Lynne Varner, left, and Bruce Ramsey

Lynne Varner: Bruce, how something is said is just as important as what is said. Sen. Reid could not have angered the Republican Party more if he had set off a bomb in their midst. America is still so touchy about race that few reasonable conversations can be had on the topic. He would've been better to compare Republicans' obstructionist approach to healthcare to something else and not to resistance to ending slavery.

That said, the man speaketh the truth. The comparison was accurate. And to make sure we're all debating the same thing, here are the words uttered by the Democratic senator from Nevada:

"When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery there were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough'; When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today," Reid said.

Hit dogs will holler ouch over Reid's words but how else to describe those who say slow down on health care reform - despite 48 million people uninsured and hundreds of millions of dollars borne by hospitals in uncompensated care - Harborview Medical Center alone lost more than $100 million last year on uninsured people unable to pay for their care.

Moreover, Reid doesn't have a lock on outlandish comparisons. On Sunday, a top Republican leader, John Cornyn (R-Texas) compared Reid's health care reform plan to a Stalin-era Soviet prison. Cornyn, on Fox News, said: "It will limit people's choices to, in many cases, to a government-run program like Medicaid which is essentially a health care gulag"

Bruce Ramsey: Sure, Reid holds no copyright on political goosing, I'll grant you that. But let's not excuse him for his bad manners. He was trying to wrap himself in the mantle of Abraham Lincoln (a Republican!) and other campaigners for civil rights, and compare the critics of his 1,000-page medical insurance bill to George Wallace or maybe even Jeff Davis. He was playing the race card over a bill to regulate health insurance. That's ridiculous. This debate is about the terms and conditions under which people buy insurance--how much the government will help them and how much it will impose its will on them.

You ask, "How else to describe those who say slow down on health care reform?" Lots of ways. Cautious, for one. Wise, I think. Skeptical--of the claim that we can insure millions more people and not add to the deficit; skeptical of the claim that $500 million can be squeezed out of Medicare without hurting anybody; and skeptical of the general portrayal of insurance companies as evil and the government as good. There's a lot of hard sell going on here, and as Reid demonstrated, also a measure of nasty intimidation.

Finally, there is the matter of Reid's own seat, as is detailed in this story. And here is the candidate who could beat him. It looks to me as if Reid is a man in trouble, and is acting that way.

Lynne Varner replies: Bruce, when is talking about race not playing the race card? When you tell your teenage child to drive safely, reminding them of a past fender bender, are you playing the car crash card? Rights in this country were achieved slowly and through much bloodshed. Is that historical footnote playing the race card?

I believe we will look back one day and regret agonizing over whether or not to give the uninsured health care, whether or not to charge women the same insurance rates as women and whether or not to allow include abortion in a full health care coverage plan. Yet we're agonizing over those things now. That's not the race card, that's the some- Americans-are-slow-to-recognize-the-rights-they-enjoy-should-be-enjoyed-by-others card.

At his Seattle progressive blog, Horse's Ass, David Goldstein offers a bar chart, here, purporting to show the excellence of Obama's economics. Based on "modified" Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the bar chart purports to show that the rate of layoff in the American economy turned neatly around within a month of the time President Obama took office. Goldy has nicely colored the bars red and blue, so you can see the Republican failure and the Democratic triumph.

I see some problems with this. Goldy's link does not work. If you take the earlier parts of it, you do get to the BLS, and you can look up statistics. Lots of them. But which ones, and modified which way?

Set that aside. I'll concede that an honest bar chart of the rate of layoff (not total unemployment) would look roughly like that. In other words, unemployment continued to get worse when Obama took office, but its rate of getting worse began to slow down. But that means--what?

The image here is of President Bush at the controls of the U.S. economy, pressing pedals and flipping knobs and switches, all bollixed up, the gears screaming, smoke emitting from the control panel, a stupid pear-eating Republican grin on his face, and the smart, wily Obama pushing him aside, shifting gears, pressing the "STIMULUS" button, smartly turning a wheel, and the great ship Economy immediately responding. But that's a child's picture, like the child's idea of God sitting on a big chair in the clouds. No president runs the economy. It's not managed out of the White House, Congress, or even the Fed. They can affect it, but only some, and generally after a lag.

If an honest bar chart shows an instant turnaround, that means either that Barack Obama is uniquely effective and powerful, unlike any previous president of the United States, and deserves our worship and homage, or that he was lucky.

Civil disagreements, with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times editorial board, is a weekly feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Here Lynne and Bruce debate gun control laws in the wake of the shooting deaths of four Lakewood, Wa. police officers and a month earlier, a Seattle Police Officer

Lynne Varner, left, and Bruce Ramsey

Lynne Varner: Bruce, I'll be accused of being a knee-jerk reactionary but I have to admit what is true: I've been thinking about gun control laws since the morning I awoke to the news that four police officers were gunned down inside a coffee shop.

Yes, I've read the Second Amendment but no right is absolute. Police officers and other symbols of government take on a certain amount of risk to do their jobs, if restricting the flow of guns or making it more difficult to purchase guns eases our collective minds somewhat, we should consider it. It is true, that a vibrant gun market would exist outside the confines of the law. Nonetheless, we could all rest easier knowing the rules of law extend even to gun ownership.

Officials in Washington state and Arkansas are arguing over who could've done the most to keep Clemmons in jail. But I'm looking beyond Clemmons. He's thankfully dead. How do we stop the others who share his callous disregard for human life?

Bruce Ramsey: You don't stop it entirely, Lynne. In this case it looks as if the people in the corrections system knew enough about him to know not to let him out. And yet they did. If this case tells you to fix something, it tells you to fix that. Fix the individual mistake.

Lynne Varner: I don't think its a case of either or but both. To see a litany of the bone-headed errors that led to an awful tragedy check out this story and this one. There are plenty of changes that need to be made in the area of parole and clemency. But back to the need to control the amount of guns on the street, if you want to spend the night up wall-eyed with fear check out this Department of Justice webpage detailing the kinds of inmates in our state prisons. Here's one little factoid: at least 8% of murderers on death row committed murders before doing the crime that put them on death row. A third of them were on parole or probation at the time they committed their capital offenses and 65% had prior felony convictions.

These guys, or anyone they might turn to for help, ought to find it as difficult as possible to get their hands on a gun.

Bruce Ramsey: That's curtailing the rights of everyone, and that's a different matter.

I used to be in favor of gun control. I lived in Hong Kong for a while. The only way an ordinary citizen could have a lawful gun was to keep it at a target-shooting club. In Hong Kong the weapon of choice of petty criminals was a knife, and the homicide rate was about one-quarter the U.S. rate. I came back to Seattle in 1993, when the U.S. crime rate was at about a 60-year high. There was a drive-by shooting at Ballard High School, and a student killed (not even the one the shooter intended). And I thought: this is ridiculous. We should get rid of guns.

And if I were designing a society from scratch--a society on Mars, maybe.--I would do that. But we don't start with a blank slate. A right to own small arms is deep in our culture, and is protected in the U.S. Constitution and even stronger in the 1889 Washington Constitution. I revere those documents for all the rights they protect, and I don't want to cut any more holes in them. We have to live with gun rights, and I think we can by focusing on crime itself rather than the tools criminals may use.

Lynne Varner adds:Focusing on the crime and not the tools is shortsighted as any security expert for banking, technolology or other industries could tell you. You'll never deter all crimes, so targeting the tools criminals use is a way to prevent or at least make criminal activities more difficult. In 2006, 10,700 people in the United States died by gunfire. After 9-11 many Americans agreed with security changes that altered our freedoms, and in some cases, our rights. We agreed it was important to do so to offer a modicum of public safety. So it ought to be with guns. Cogent thoughts on this anyone?

The police should continue to scour the city for anyone who gave a thimble full of comfort to the man who gunned down four cops Sunday before being shot and killed early Tuesday by a Seattle police officer.

In my column today, I argue that society is in deep trouble when people have such callous disregard for the law and our living symbols of it - police officers - that they would help a man who has just murdered four officers get away.

Police have charged two men and are looking for others. Good, these folks ought to become acquainted with state law, specifically RCW 9A.76.070 which states that rendering criminal assistance is a felony punishable by up to a year in jail.

The Northwest is aghast and alarmed. A gunman walked into a coffee shop Sunday morning and opened fire, killing four Lakewood police officers.
The motive is unclear but one thing is certain: No civilized society can allow unabashed murderers to declare open season on the very people hired to protect the community.
State Attorney General Rob McKenna referred to the execution-style slayings of one female and three male officers as assassinations. Whatever the term, this brutal act of violence sends shivers through the Puget Sound region.
Less than a month ago, another individual drove up to a Seattle police car and opened fire on two officers in a police car, taking the life of Police Officer Timothy Brenton. This has been described as an ideological killing. Brenton was shot because he was a police officer.
What on earth is going on?
As McKenna said, "This ourtageous act of violence against our brave protectors is a direct assault on the safety of our entire community.''
How excruciatingly sad for the police community and the residents of the entire Puget Sound region who rely on police officers for protection.
A community grieves and feels an enormous loss.

King County Executive Dow Constantine launched his term with a classy swearing in event Tuesday

There was much to like about what he said: He promised to change the culture of the county and he certainly has to do that. A few days ago, he announced he was cutting executive staff and salaries by about 10 or 15 percent. A good start for what has to come. And he said he would meet with regional leaders on smart bus planning and take employee ideas for improving government to heart while:walking in the shoes of a county employee four times a year.

Further setting of the tone involved taking the number 56 bus in his first ride as executive. Obviously shades of Seattle Mayor-elect Mike McGinn and his now famed bicycle travel. But Constantine was making a point about eliminating some Cadillac benefits for county employees, including the executive.

As per the rules of the council, the council vice chairman, Bob Ferguson became chairman of the council this week, and though there was no voting on it, Ferguson is a delightful pick because he has about half- city, half suburban in his district - enough of a mix to make him more than a typical Seattle Democrat. Besides, he is smart and up to the task of handling the considerable politics at the council. .Ferguson would be a good chairman when the council selects one on a more lasting basis in January.

Civil disagreements, with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times editorial board, is a weekly feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Here Lynne and Bruce traipse through the bio-ethical minefield around marketing human organs.

Lynne Varner, left, and Bruce Ramsey

Bruce Ramsey: Human organs like lungs, livers, hearts and kidneys may be donated but not sold. So says U.S. federal law. But there is a strong case to admit the use of money.

The case for a market in human organs, including organs, like kidneys, from live donors, has been made by economists here, and here.

Their argument focuses on the chronic shortage of organs. There are probably 9,000 Americans, and maybe more, who die each year waiting for a donated organ, and if there were a market in such organs (from cadavers and maybe also from living people) the supply would tend to rise to meet the demand--and many of these people would live.

To me, that is a very powerful argument. A market would preserve life.

A lot of people recoil at this idea. They’re not against donation, including live donation (which is common within families). Donation is good--and better than good. The communitarian theorist Amitai Etzioni has written, here, an argument that people should authorize the use of their organs after they die because they consider it their "social responsibility, something a good person does, akin to volunteering, contributing to a cause, not parking in handicap spaces, recycling, not washing his or her car when there is a water shortage, and so on."

It's a nice-sounding idea, but I see little evidence that it will work as well as cash to save those 9,000 lives a year. A market would save them.

Another argument: You support abortion rights. Well, if this is your body, and the donation of an organ is your private decision, why should the government interfere with it? Why would the government allow you to kill a potential citizen and not sell a kidney?

There is another agument. I heard it from a colleague nearly 20 years ago in Hong Kong. Consider a rickshaw wallah in Bombay, who wears a ragged T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, and spends all day pedaling people around in a large tricycle. He is poor. He will always be poor. He will die poor. He does, however, have a wife and kids—and they are poor. They cannot afford any genuine medical care, or any decent education, or anything really at all. And you say to this rickshaw wallah: “Donate one kidney, and we’ll give you $50,000.”

Fifty thousand dollars is an immense fortune to him. It is like being a multi-millionaire. It means he can pay the doctor bills of his wife, or send his daughters to high school. It means his son will not have to pedal a rickshaw.

Why would you deny him that choice?

Lynne Varner:: Bruce, I'm not just suprised by your position because I'm still having nightmares from reading this book, but also because I'd think a libertarian like yourself would never want human free will to be under threat. Yet, creating a financial market for human organs just does that. People are no longer making decisions based on free will, but on how desperate they are for cash.

We are not likely to ever alleviate poverty. While we can't always change human conditions, we can be vigilant against things that exploit the poor.

From an emotional standpoint, I get your argument. Interminably long transplant wait lists have spurred arguments for selling and buying human organs. At least some on the transplant list, so the thinking goes, would not have to wait longer than it takes to write a check.

Many more organ donations come from dead people rather than those who are alive. It is macabre, this waiting for people to die so that others may live. But it is also a great gift from the dead; they allow their organs to be harvested and used to help others.

An even greater gift comes from those who are alive and donate an organ, not to gain anything from it, but merely to save a life.

A system where incentive comes not from doing good but making a buck - in the case of organ donations - becomes a dangerous one indeed. When money or a similar incentive comes into play, the weight falls heavily upon the poor and socially disadvantaged donors who are unable to make informed choices - or are too poor to refuse those choices. They ultimately suffer potential medical risks.

A financial market would also give rise to a black market. People would begin to steal organs for sell. Any guess on how they'd steal them? This would be a violent and horrible market, worse than any drug trade in history. No $ for human organs.

Slow down, this is about Seattle intersections with those cameras used to identify cars that run red lights. I want more of them.

As a regular bus commuter with a long walk across downtown Seattle to and from my bus stops, I know it is hostile territory out there for pedestrians. This is not about drivers sneaking past green-turning-yellow lights. Way too many blow through red lights and crosswalks beginning to fill. A sweeping left turn at Denny and Fairview is notorious, and 6th and Union has equally ugly moments.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat is skeptical about the use of the ticket-issuing lights, and he suspects they are better revenue producers than accident preventers. Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata has a thoughtful essay on the lights and their value. My sentiments go with the councilman. For me, the money is a bonus. Drivers can spite City Hall and spare themselves a ticket and fine by obeying the law. Simple as that.

Jaywalkers create their own problems. I will stipulate some pedestrians are blithering idiots, walking against lights and cutting across the street in the middle of the block at busy times of the day. They will suffer troubles they invite.

Red-light running drivers are a public menace. If snapping a photo of a license plate nails the worst of the worst with a fine, then all the better. More red-light cameras are coming. Terrific.

Gov. Chris Gregoire says Washington state won't compete after all in the intial round of grant funding from the $4 billion Race to the Top federal fund. This is a sharp reversal from a recent flurry of efforts to be among the 20 or so states expected to share in the pot of education improvement funds.

Just a few days ago, Randy Dorn, state Superintendent for Public Instruction, gave assurances that Washington was in it to win it.

Was Gregoire's decision smart strategy to conserve efforts for the next round of funding in June or was it belated recognition that we never stood a chance?

Countless sources have shown us what to do when you find yourself in the public eye for no good reason; write a book.

Monica Lewinsky, Paris Hilton and “Jon and Kate Plus 8” star Kate Gosselin went before her. Now, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has joined the ranks of distinguished, American authors — well, sort of.

Palin’s memoir “Going Rogue: An American Life” hit stands Nov. 17, and it is already a best seller. Even better, if one book does not quench your Palin thirst, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate’s novel has triggered everything from unauthorized biographies to coloring books slated for release in the upcoming weeks.

People cannot get enough of this woman — the first printing of “Going Rogue” was 1.5 million copies. To her credit, the Palin frenzy began long before HarperCollins announced her 400-page book deal. She sparked the public’s — and media’s — attention the moment Sen. John McCain revealed her as his running mate.

So, why all this fascination with Palin, a caribou-hunting, Carhartt-wearing, homegrown Alaskan renegade?

She was an outsider, a small-government politician no one had ever heard of, but McCain and the Republican Party saw her as their best chance to take over the White House. It was an intriguing turn of events, so the public assumed she must possess something extraordinary. There has to be more to Palin than her you-betcha attitude and any other Tina Fey-inspired parodies that never leave her side.

Right? Maybe not.

The day before her 13-city book tour commenced, Palin appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for a world exclusive interview. It also dispelled rumors Winfrey snubbed the conservative candidate during last year’s campaign.

The talk show host provided Palin a platform to redeem herself for past bloopers, but the new author did not make amends. Referencing the infamous Katie Couric interview, Winfrey again asked her guest the newspapers, magazines or books she read to help prepare for her candidacy.

The Stranger has an interesting piece this week. Its cover story, “Death to the Old Machine,” is a 5,200-word political screed—the equivalent of five pages of text—by Grant Cogswell. Once described in the Times as a “poet populist,” Cogswell has been a filmmaker, a failed candidate for City Council (running against Richard McIver in 2001) a tub-thumper for the late Seattle Monorail Project and for the idea of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a surface street.

Cogswell is an expressive writer. What he reveals is the flavor and fascinations of the Seattle Left, or at least a considerable part of it. There are many things you might say about the Left, but one thing stands out in Cogswell’s essay for not being there. In an half-acre of words of political discourse about Seattle, there is not one thought about its economic underpinnings—about commerce, trade, taxes, regulation, labor, competitiveness and business climate. Nothing.

Well, what do you know, a fast and facile accusation of sexism is being tossed at ''Newsweek'' magazine for its latest cover photo showing Sarah Palin in her jogging outit, a photo for which she posed for a different magazine, Runners World.
With no judgment on the propriety of using that photo from the running magazine, I take issue with the constant flinging of -ism terms about a woman who is proud, and should be proud, of her ability to run.

PHOTOGRAPHER/SOURCE

Caption text here.

Ipso facto, don't even take a breath, those editors at Newsweek must be sexist, right?
I think not. I think we toss 'the term sexism and other "'ism'' labels around too readily.
And no, you can not therefore conclude that I am a sexist, though many will. If in doubt, fling one of the accusations around.
As a runner who has been out in the rain, the hail and the rest of it, I say congratulations to Paliln for sending a message of fitness and health.

The Obama administration waded into the furor over new recommendations on mammograms by a government-appointed panel. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebellius downplayed the panel's findings, saying mammograms still vital for women age 40 and above.

Good start Madam Secretary: The Obama Administration must go farther. The public must be assured that the mammogram recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force do not find their way into health care legislation.

My column was one of many voices critical of panel's recommendation.

Breast cancer falls behind lung cancer as the top killer of women.
Black women have a higher rate of a more aggressive form of the disease. Like any cancer, the longer it goes undetected the stronger the disease grows and the more difficult it is to cure. Mammograms may not save enough lives to impress the scientists but if it saved your life, your wife's or your daughter's, wouldn't it be worth it.

It apparently is for the 39 million women who undergo mammograms each year in the United States. I understand the expense - more than $5 billion annually for the health care system - represents a challenge. But what would be the cost to the healthcare system if fewer women got mammograms and there was a rise in breast cancer diagnoses in the latter stages when it is more expensive and perilous to treat?

My column takes on the new breast cancer prevention guidelines issued by a federal government-appointed panel of medical experts.

The recommendations are shortsighted because they take a narrow scientific findings -mammograms don't save as many lives as we'd hoped - and extrapolate that to a recommendation to sideline this preventive tool for most women. The kicker that led to my outrage? Not all women should be taught to do monthly breast self-exams. Really?

Breast cancer kills the most women after lung cancer. Black women have a higher rate of a more aggressive form of the disease. Like any cancer, the longer it goes undetected the stronger the disease grows and the more difficult it is to cure. So mammograms don't save enough lives to impress the scientists; but what if it saved your life? Your wife's or your daughter's? Wouldn't that be enough for you? It apparently is for the 39 million women who undergo mammograms each year in the United States. I understand the expense of mammography, more than $5 billion for the health care system each year. But I wonder what would be the cost to the healthcare system if women didn't get mammograms and a significant number discovered breast cancer in its second, third or fourth stages.

Over the weekend I watched the movie, “Nothing but the Truth.” It’s a year old, but not that many people saw it, and it’s an interesting film. A political film. I often don’t care for the politics of Hollywood movies, and I didn’t for this one, either.

“Nothing but the Truth” is a fictionalization of the case of journalist Judith Miller and CIA operative Valerie Plame. In real life, Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, went to the African nation of Niger to investigate a reason for attacking Iraq, didn’t find that reason, and later told this story publicly, saying the White House had lied about the reason for going to war. A White House source retaliated against Wilson by leaking a story to the reporter, Miller, that Wilson’s wife, Plame, was a CIA agent, wrecking the wife’s career. Miller broke no law by outing a CIA agent, but her source did, and the Justice Department demanded that Miller identify him. She wouldn’t, and spent 85 days in jail.

Yes, folks, the Seattle Weekly has discovered this. The paper's cover story by Rick Anderson, "Armed & Litigious," is subtitled, "Ex-Con Alan Gottlieb is taking the fight against gun control to the Supreme Court--and fattening his wallet in the process."

For liberals I know in journalism, to make a living is a big, big sin in regards to certain people. Tim Eyman is one. Alan Gottlieb is another. Journalists who disagree with these guys think it's deeply wrong and unfair that they feed their families by what they do. By harping on this, these journalists insinuate in their stories that these guys are just in it for the money. The implication is that if Gottlieb could make more money as a tree pruner, or baking apple pies, he'd be doing that; and if Eyman could make more money selling watches, he'd still be doing that. And this is almost certainly not true. These guys are doing what they want to do.