One of my favourite anecdotes is from Justice Breyer:

Breyer also weighs in on civics. “More people know the name of the Three Stooges than know the name of the Supreme Court justices,” he says. “That’s all right. But if more people know the name of the Three Stooges than know that there are three branches of government, that’s not all right. What people should know is about the institution that it exists, and how it works, and why it works the way it does. And that concerns them. And the reason it concerns them is because we live in a democracy that eventually rests on the support of the people.”

http://www.cafepress.com/iheartshirtz/4594349

"other issues brought to life in the report"

It should be "brought to light".

Wow, really?

Given the time of day and the location, odds are the victim is a homeless person and from the sounds of it not entirely mentally stable.

It sounds to me more like the other people were escalating the situation and decided to take advantage of a vulnerable person.

Hopefully Welling was an organ donor. At least some good could come of it that way.

Not to mention building up as rime ice on the wings and impacting their lift generating capability. This is especially dangerous if the ice buildup is asymmetrical and affects one wing more than the other.

Reddit.com's founder makes a good point; "...we look at Congress and we can’t see them do anything that’s important. They can’t solve the problems of unemployment, they can’t solve the problems of the deficit. Yet as soon as a lobbyist shows up with $94 million, Democrats and Republicans line up to co-sponsor it. Something is wrong."

Wow... talk about trolls.

And BTW, he is alive and well.

That certainly is a beautiful picture, but there are two issues I see with using that to illustrate a story concerning Mt. Rainier.

1. The image does not show the iconic/stereotypical "Mt. Rainier", which is important when using it in an article such as this. The Flickr photo could be from any number of other mountains in the world.

2. The Flickr image is copyrighted. If KOMO were to want to use it, they would need to contact the author and get permission to use it on their website. If the image were licensed under an appropriate Creative Commons/Wikimedia license, KOMO would be more likely/able to use it.

I give the new system three months before they have to shut it down for "recalibration" or some such. I just don't have any faith that WSDOT and the contractor can make this work reliably. I also predict that come the first billing cycle there will be people with $50,000 worth of charges arriving in the mail.