• On Monday, October 22, eight Seattle City Council members—minus the support of Mike O'Brien—passed a resolution aimed at locking Mayor Mike McGinn and an unwilling Seattle Police Department into their choice of independent police monitor, Merrick Bobb, a man with 20 years of police reform experience. The city must agree on a monitor to oversee the reforms outlined by the Department of Justice by October 26, and it now seems that deadline will be met: "We believe that their vote was a mistake, but respect that this is now the City's position," McGinn's office wrote in response to the resolution. Just so no one misses it here: McGinn is trying to undermine the monitor from the outset by calling his selection a "mistake." Christ, what an asshole.

• Select city council members are scheming to cut up to $5 million in transit funding from McGinn's proposed 2013–14 budget, money that would be used to study high-capacity transit—most likely light rail—from downtown to Ballard and the University District, among other routes, because they're "total pig fuckers," according to a source.

• In a more reasoned response, former mayor Greg Nickels posted comments on the Facebook pages of every city council member asking them to approve the transit funding. "I hope you will be supporting efforts to expand Seattle rail transit in the budget," Nickels pleaded.

• Kshama Sawant, the Socialist running for 43rd District representative, was let go from her teaching position as an economics instructor at Seattle Central Community College. Her contract was not renewed, sources say, because the college wanted more "diversity." Which would make sense if the school were teeming with Indian female Socialist economists with PhDs, which it isn't (she's the only one). Sawant, who has had excellent performance reviews, caused a dustup last year by joining her teachers' union to help bring Occupy Seattle to the community college campus.

• Radcliffe Haughton—the man who shot seven women at a suburban Wisconsin day spa on Sunday, October 21, killing three including his wife before turning the gun on himself—had been under court order to surrender all his weapons. But that didn't stop him from exploiting Wisconsin's "gun show loophole" to purchase a gun the day before his rampage. Washington State law has the same loophole, which allows private sales of firearms without a background check or waiting period. Will legislators act before a similar tragedy happens here? Probably not. recommended