Local Judge Puts the Brakes on Oil Train Expansion: A Skagit County hearing examiner has agreed with concerns raised by six environmental groups and ordered an additional review of Shell's plans to bring yet more oil trains through the region to its refinery in Anacortes. "The crude oil being brought in large quantities," the examiner concluded, "to a small area in the northwest Washington State is highly flammable and explosive. Catastrophes have occurred elsewhere. No one doubts that such a thing could occur here." KING 5 has more.
That Decision Could Save Lives: This is a hell of a lede from the Associated Press—"The federal government predicts that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S."
Obama Expected to Veto Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Phew! Sydney Brownstone explained last month what that could mean for Washington.
Seattle City Council Adopts Privacy Framework: There aren't rules in place yet for how the city will handle data under this ethical framework. But the council took a solid first step yesterday toward enshrining the right to privacy—now let's see whether they can build enforceable policies around it.
Dozens Protest "Anti-Homeless" Law in Burien: Here's the report from KING 5 on last night's demonstration against the Burien City Council. Check out Real Change—hey, another snazzy new website!—for a primer on everything that's wrong with the law.
Native American Murals Defaced: Local artist Andrew Morrison is furious that his portraits of indigenous chiefs at the Wilson Pacific School in Wallingford have been damaged by seemingly pointless graffiti. The paintings took him 12 years to complete, he told KOMO. "My reaction was heartbreak. I immediately knew this action was an evil act."
Should the Cascade Bicycle Club Engage in Political Advocacy? Hmm. Hell fucking yes? Publicola has the rundown on a petition by people who the city's premier group representing cyclists to keep pushing for bike-friendly infrastructure. It's called Save Cascade.
Sound Transit 3 Authorization Moving Forward: Seattle Transit Blog is closely tracking the legislation at the state level, and they got a clear commitment from finance chair Reuven Carlyle that a bill to green-light the package—which represents the next phase of light rail development in the King County area—will pass out of his committee.
Look at This Picture of the Crazy Man Running the NSA: Here. Right here. His name is Mike Rogers and his agency is stealing encryption keys to SIM cards, collecting billions of bits of metadata on people worldwide, and god knows what else. At a cybersecurity forum, Yahoo's chief information security officer challenged Rogers on the notion that US companies should, because the NSA demands it, provide "backdoors, or golden master keys" that allow the government to collect data from their systems. He likened it to "drilling a hole through a windshield." Rogers dodged the question.
Do You Work in Government? If you're seeing something sketchy going on, take what Edward Snowden says in this Reddit AMA to heart: If I could do it over, he says, "I would have come forward sooner." On that note, sometimes going back on your own word is an act of courage. (Drop me a line at ansel@thestranger.com or via my PGP key whenever.)
Take Everything Jay Smooth Says to Heart: If you watch one video all week, watch his commentary on the Oscars below: "All of us, as good people, are still naturally prone to doing bad things... one of those bad habits is that if you work in a field where the status quo is unjust for others, but comfortable for you, you will tend to make decisions that preserve your comfort and thus preserve the status quo—if you don't make a conscious, constant commitment to do otherwise."
