FLIPPANT ATTITUDE

DEAR STRANGER EDITORS: I am disappointed in your endorsement
editorial board staff [“Endorsements,” Aug 7]. Since when is it
appropriate to lodge personal attacks against candidates? I personally
know secretary of state candidate Jason Osgood and he is NOTHING like
what your staff described him to be. He has studied election issues for
many years and encouraged the King County Council to ban bar codes
linked to each voter ID on all ballots in King County. His lobbying
efforts resulted in the council hiring a computer-security expert to
analyze King County’s proposal to purchase new Diebold equipment, which
included a plan to make massive changes in procedures for the 2008
election. Your staff’s flippant attitude toward election integrity
issues and toward Mr. Osgood reveals your staff’s extreme
ignorance.

There was a time when I may have looked to your newspaper for
candidate recommendations but now that I see from personal knowledge
how you judge candidates, I will look elsewhere. Just because you are a
secondary weekly newspaper doesn’t mean you have to perform at that
level.

Jan Dixon

HEADS WITHIN ASSES

Your endorsement of Gregoire and your attack on Rossi sounded just
like the Democratic party whining that we have been hearing for nearly
eight years. Scared of a Republican governor? You should be, because
that is exactly what you are getting in November. Also, a Republican
president. Liberals: Get your heads out of your asses and put someone
electable on the ballot. PLEASE. I want to be on your side.

Neil Blender

BOAT, MISSED

DEAR EDITOR: I should start by saying that Jim Beecher is my dad, so
feel free to take my comments in that context. The Stranger is
obviously entitled to endorse whomever it pleases, but I just wanted to
let you know that I was both surprised and alarmed when I saw this:
“But some of Beecher’s more widely circulated beliefs (‘The
responsibility of the court is to interpret and clarify the law, not to
legislate’) suggest he would be to the right of Johnson on issues that
come before the court more frequently than marriage equality.”

I’m not sure how you connect those two concepts (the court should
not legislate and being to the right of Johnson), other than a
generalized misuse of those concepts by right-wingers. In any event,
you completely missed the boat regarding Jim’s position on gays rights
issues generally, and his political leanings in general. He is
definitively a proponent of gay rights. Keep in mind that the reason he
thinks the “court should be embarrassed” was that the legislature had
stripped a constitutional right away from individuals simply because of
their sexual preference. Not “legislating from the bench” simply means
that a court ought to respect its place in constitutional
governance—a place that includes the responsibility to protect
the constitutional rights of those the majority sometimes fails to
honor. Jim’s error was one of choice of words to a nonlegal audience,
not a demonstration of allegiance to the right.

Brent Beecher

UNFORTUNATE

DEAR EDITORS: Your joking dismissal in your secretary of state
endorsement of the fact that incumbent Sam Reed supports the placement
of unique bar codes on ballots is unfortunate. Election integrity
issues are critical. Yes, even in Washington State. Just because the
Republican party cooked up false election integrity accusations against
Democrats and are still screaming about it doesn’t mean that this issue
isn’t important.

Noemie Maxwell

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: In a brief moment of sobriety, the Stranger
Election Control Board has come to realize that mistakes were made in
our recent 2008 primary endorsements. The SECB endorsed Jean Rietschel
for a Superior Court judge position, noting her experience as Municipal
Court commissioner for 12 years; Rietschel was in fact a Municipal
Court judge. We regret the error. Elsewhere, our endorsements were
riddled with grammatical and typographical errors, some of which
inevitably ended up in print. We regret our negligence and general
sloppy state.