NEWS Let me get this straight. This bunch of incorrigible sodomites demands that the government, the moralists, and the unattractive Metro bus patrons all stay out of their bedrooms so that they can be uninhibited while doing whatever it is they like to do there (and believe me, you don't want to know what it is they like to do there). And yet supposed freedom fighter JOSH FEIT now wants to peer into the checkbooks of my good friends Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, two of the new owners of the Seattle Sonics and Seattle Storm, in order to inhibit their private political speech? Tom and Aubrey's only "crime" is putting their oil and natural-gas fortunes behind their beliefs, which happen to include keeping gays from getting married. Now look, I like sweaty basketball-loving lesbians as much as Mr. Feit, and I suppose nuptials only make the video hotter, but I'm not going to tell an energy titan not to make his money talk. That's like telling Mr. Feit to make some money before he talks: not gonna happen. ALSO: More slavish coverage of Peter Steinbrueck by ERICA C. BARNETT, more hysteria from an INTERN, and something about censorship (an idea that sounds better and better the longer I hold this position). PLUS: In the Hall.

SHORT FEATURE Through the Past, BrightlyI guess when you're selling newspapers, if a story is not going to involve sex, then it better give the people some death—or, in this case, a woman who defies it both physically and artistically. JEN GRAVES certainly delivers on that score, but, in a development that made me check to see if I was still reading The Stranger, she also manages to elevate herself and her subject above the normally base interests of this rag—and the hungry rabble it so loves to feed. I fear she will now suffer the same fate as other thoughtful Stranger writers: an assignment to kill something and then write about it (see KILEY, B).

FEATURE The ForgottenNow here is a writer who gives the people what they want: birth, love, death—and not just any death, but death at the hands of the law. ANGELA VALDEZ, I see that you not only got the memo from Mr. Savage, but also took it to heart. And because of that, I fear for your soul.