Dear Speaker Chopp, We are the leaders of the United Faculty of Washington State. We represent 2200 faculty and educate 31,000 students at Washington’s Regional Comprehensive Universities. We write to you knowing that you are working hard to find the right balance of new revenues and spending cuts in order to balance the 2010 supplemental…

Oscar night had us here at the blog reflecting on our old school movie tastes. We’re suckers for a flick like Casablanca, not just for all the good lines, but also for the way it takes place in the interstices, away from the main action. While World War Two rages outside, beautiful people and character actors…

Being a state legislator has got to be a pretty crappy job. You get paid enough to qualify for public assistance, you have to abandon your home and family for two or three months a year, lobbyists and constituents assault you every fifteen minutes expecting you to fully understand and solve their problems, you spend…