Leaking

The Jim McDermott leak case (featuring a police scanner, a cell phone, a Waffle House restaurant, Bill Clinton, and now House Majority Leader John Boehner) will be heard by the full U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. this September ["The War on Jim McDermott," Eli Sanders, May 18]. That means Seattle's congressman-for-life has one more stop before he finds himself at the U.S. Supreme Court, defending his right to leak information of public importance (to wit, the contents of an illegally made tape that caught former House Speaker Newt Gingrich violating a deal he had made with the House Ethics Committee). ELI SANDERS

Hissing

A seemingly innocuous plan to improve the children's playfield at Madison Park has sparked conflict between the adults in an otherwise tranquil, upscale Seattle neighborhood. On one side, the Madison Park Community Council, which a year ago dispatched a small group of volunteers to pursue park funding. That group became the Friends of Madison Park. Not satisfied with the roughly $200,000 they gathered from a mix of public funds and private donations, the Friends have asked the community to help raise another $600,000 for improvements beyond the playfield. However, community council members, like President Maurice Cooper, say the Friends haven't been specific about how those funds would be spent. "Nobody wants to pay for something when they don't know what they're getting," says Cooper. At a recent public meeting, Cooper suggested the group step back from its funding drive to describe its plans in greater detail. "They just hissed at me," he says. The Friends did not respond to e-mails sent to their web address. THOMAS FRANCIS