• On Monday, October 7, the Seattle City Council passed a bill that could effectively ban medical marijuana dispensaries within the city limits by requiring the dispensaries to obtain a state medical-marijuana license by 2015—a license that does not exist. As the council wrote in a letter to the governor on September 30, "If relatively easy access to medical cannabis continues, the goals and potential of Initiative 502 [which legalized marijuana for recreational use] will be undermined." But activists argue the council is violating voter intent. The initiative to legalize recreational pot last fall was not supposed to reduce patients' access to medical marijuana. As longtime medical marijuana activist Philip Dawdy told the council, "You are going to be punishing patients if they get shut down."

• A new poll conducted by PPP on behalf of Washington Conservation Voters, which backs Ed Murray's mayoral campaign, has found the state senator leading incumbent Mike McGinn 52 percent to 28 percent in the race for Seattle mayor. There are a ton of nits that could be picked with the cross tabs, by there's zero good news here for McGinn, so it's not really worth the effort.

• "The poll is bullshit," counters McGinn campaign consultant John Wyble on Slog. "The Murray camp has Murray up 12. On the mayor's side, our calling shows us down 7. We have three debates, tv ads, and the best ground game in the history of Seattle. This will be close."

• On Thursday, October 3, Council President Sally Clark banned Sam Bellomio from speaking before the council for two weeks after he called Council Member Tim Burgess "a dick." Bellomio, who is running for Sally Bagshaw's council seat, routinely uses his two-minute public testimony to yell at top volume and call the council members "crooks." At Monday's council meeting, Clark announced that they'll be updating rules regarding public comment so that repeatedly disruptive commenters suffer consequences. Despite Thursday's commenting ban, Bellomio was allowed to speak during the meeting. "This is worse than Nazi Germany!" he said.