The same editorial board who said they "believe Candace Faber’s accusations should be taken seriously and fully investigated" is now calling for Washington lawmakers to drop their investigation of former state senator Joe Fain, who was accused of raping Faber in a hotel room in 2007 after she graduated from a master's program at Georgetown University. Fain denies the allegation and has called for an investigation.

Now that the voters have clearly spoken on this issue by electing Democrat Mona Das over Fain, the board argues, incoming Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig's decision to continue the investigation "smacks of partisan politics" and risks "alienating minority Republicans" who Democrats still need to work with on legislation. It's simply "the wrong move," says the masterful political tacticians at the Times, "a waste of time and resources." To which I say: Give me a fucking break.

The investigation only "smacks of partisan politics" if the Times wants it to. As the board acknowledges, a bipartisan committee approved the funds. Democrats and Republicans agreed that, yeah, it's the legislature's duty to investigate Faber's claims. Moreover, when the board doubled down on their endorsement of their "treasured" candidate, they also strongly "considered" a letter written by nine elected women—three Republican senators among them—who argued that "some method for finding truth and healing is critical to everyone involved and our community" and that "we all must be patient and honor the manner in which a fair and positive process emerges."

Hiring a third party to investigate the claims is the "fair and positive process" that has emerged—agreed upon, again, by Democrats and Republicans—and it should continue to go forward. Fain's party affiliation is completely immaterial to the investigation, and if GOP senators want to construe the investigation as a partisan attack, they'll have to explain why their own members—including Fain—supported an investigation in the first place. The Times clearly wants this to be a partisan issue for some reason, and the fact that it's not is making their knee-jerk CIVILITY NOW argument seem even more hollow than it normally seems.

Moreover, NOT going through with the investigation is the thing that would "smack of" partisan politics. As Faber told King 5, lawmakers already politicized her story by waiting until after the election to act. “If they drop it now," she told King 5, "it will indicate to me that they were simply using the idea of an investigation to avoid taking meaningful action." If the editorial board really wanted to dig into the Dems, they should be scolding them for not calling for an emergency committee meeting in late September when Faber first publicly named Fain as her alleged rapist.

But in their editorial, the Times assumes that the entire point of the investigation was to "help senators decide whether or not Fain should rejoin the chamber," and so, since he's not rejoining the chamber, it's "unclear what this investigation would accomplish or what the Senate would ultimately be able to do with the results."

This is their strongest argument for ending the investigation. If they would have just left it there without adding their "smacks of partisan politics" twist, then they would have saved themselves some embarrassment. But their commitment to making bad arguments compelled them to say all that stuff about alienating Republicans, and so here we are.

That said, it's true that one of the points of the investigation was to decide whether Fain should rejoin the chamber. But another point of the investigation was to put Fain in a room and make him answer questions about what happened that night. It's reasonable to assume that he will—like Rep. Matt Manweller before him—refuse to comment, claim he doesn't remember certain events in the way Faber presented them, or just deny deny deny, which is what he's done with journalists who have tried to ask him these questions.

But even if the investigation won't force Fain to answer the questions Faber wants him to answer, and even though Fain's not coming back to Olympia, the investigation won't be a waste of "up to $100,000" in taxpayer dollars. As Sen. Billig recently told King 5 , proceeding with the investigation will "set the right precedent" for the way lawmakers should handle similar claims in the future. I'm willing to have my tax dollars pay for setting that precedent, and for sending the right message to victims of sexual assault. Not going through with the investigation would set a dumb and indefensible precedent, one that says the legislature only takes the stories of survivors seriously if those stories suit their immediate political needs.

The editorial board concludes their bad argument by calling for lawmakers to "channel their efforts toward preventing and addressing sexual harassment for women and employees who work at the Capitol" as a way to shield themselves from the criticism that the Times clearly just wants this whole issue to go away.

But this isn't an either/or situation. Lawmakers can write laws that increase protections for victims of sexual harassment while overseeing an investigation conducted by a third party. They can and should do both.