• The Associated Press issued a controversial memo Tuesday setting different standards to describe people in gay and straight marriages. "Generally AP uses couples or partners to describe people in civil unions or same-sex marriages," said the memo from the AP's Tom Kent and Dave Minthorn. While it's acceptable to call two married women "wives" or married men "husbands" in a quote, the AP apparently thinks that's inappropriate otherwise. "I'm in shock," says Equal Rights Washington marriage equality director Josh Friedes, who says the term husband or wife should apply equally. "For the AP to use different standards for same-sex married couples and heterosexual married couples is flagrant discrimination and undermines the legal and social equality we have labored for decades to achieve."
• Citing our state's constitutional "paramount duty" to amply provide for the education of our children, house Republican members have filed HB 1788—"The Safe Schools Act"—authorizing teachers to carry guns in school. Because house Republicans members are fucking crazy.
• After taking heat from right-wing blowhards for sponsoring a bill to remove gender-specific language in Washington State law, Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) hit back most eloquently, pointing out that her bill wastes neither time nor money. Further, she explained, "if society's gender history were reversed, I wonder how many men today would feel comfortable being called a 'firewoman,' 'policewoman,' or 'fisherwoman.'" Touché, senator.
• Fair-and-balanced Seattle Times reporter Lynn Thompson is the poster child of a political campaign. Literally. Which may seem odd, considering that the paper claims its news coverage is neutral on politics. Thompson, who covers city hall, appears on the front of a new brochure for the University of Washington Alumni Association's political advocacy wing, UW Impact, which conducts grassroots lobbying that targets state lawmakers to fund the UW. "It's a campaign to support public funding for higher education," Thompson says of the admirable advocacy position. "I don't cover higher education."
• Several people are offended by signs in the window of Cavalry Fellowship in Mountlake Terrace announcing the youth group's "Ethnic Month," with "Black Nite," "Scandanvian [sic] Nite," and "Oriental Nite" and a call to "celebrate and mock the differences." Church youth pastor Craig Finley explained by e-mail: "As a sort of poke in the eye to the over pc sensitivity to stuff like this, we're having some fun celebrating the different ethnic cultures." Finley also pointed out that he's Filipino.
• This is your scheduled reminder that Matthew Duran and Katherine Olejnik are still in federal detention in SeaTac without having been charged—much less convicted—of any crimes. They've been in prison since September for not answering questions from federal prosecutors, and since a few days after Christmas, they've both been held in solitary confinement. 
