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.