Happy winter solstice. Night is the new normal.
Happy winter solstice. Night is the new normal. pkanchana/Getty Images

Slog PM tonight is brought to you by our very own Slog Bong: Brent Rogers made us the pot paraphernalia of our dreams. You can learn more about him from this story from our Green Guide last year.
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Katie Herzog

It's sleek, it's sexy, it's Slog. We may have taken a little holiday toke in the office. We lit it and quit it, baby. Holidays? More like holidaze. (I should get fired for that joke.) Speaking of the holidays, we're going on our winter break for the rest of the year. Some of us will still be around. I'll be taking over Slog AM again a few days next week. PM will get a rest until 2019.

Ex-high-performance director of Mariners files lawsuit: Dr. Lorena Martin is suing the Mariners. She was fired earlier this year. Martin counters claims by the Mariners that she did not bring up her concerns about racial and gender discrimination on the job. In fact, according to the lawsuit, Martin did. She says she was treated poorly and differently as an employee. She also alleges that she witnessed Latino players being treated poorly as well.

Washington Supreme Court to review democracy voucher program: The program, which uses money raised from property taxes to give voters four $25 vouchers, allows people to be more involved in the political process. Voters can donate the vouchers to candidates of their choice. Two local property owners sued because they said the program violated their freedom of speech since it made them donate to candidates they wouldn't normally support. The King County Superior Court ruled against it. But now it's getting reviewed by the Supreme Court.

It's officially winter: Yikes! Looks like it's going to get cold. Good luck to all you poor saps, I'm going home to California. If it's 80 degrees there, though, I'm going to scream. That's just wrong.


Enjoy the solstice: The Long Dark will soon end.



This is the hell that awaits me tonight: Look, I get the whole idea of "holiday cheer" or whatever, but I don't want to feel cheerful when I'm flying. Unless I'm in a Hudson News, I'm not cheerful in an airport. I'm not not cheerful, don't get me wrong, I like airports but the holidays and airports? No.


Thank god, Bergman Luggage is a national landmark: The Landmarks Preservation Board declared the site at 1901 Third Avenue a landmark. What's so special about this luggage store? Who is emotionally attached? Speak up!

Someone sent Donald Trump a Christmas present:


The government could shut down tonight: All the Washington hot-shots are trying to avert what's seemed like an inevitable government shutdown. It's the eleventh hour. Funding runs out for several agencies at midnight. If so, will NORAD be able to track Santa? That's what the people really want to know. Trump is warning that if he doesn't get his wall the shutdown could last "a very long time."

The Supreme Court rules against Trump's asylum ban: Hooray! People can seek asylum now! Ruth Bader Ginsburg apparently voted against the ban right before her surgery to remove cancerous growths from her lungs.

Introducing the new Slog AM intern, Timothy Kenney! Timothy is a recent University of Washington grad who majored in journalism (gasp) and biology! He's from Chicago originally and had dreams of becoming a marine biologist because of his love of sea turtles.

Timothy worked as the Science Editor at The Daily of the University of Washington, interned at the International Examiner, and has written for GeekWire. He also spent a summer in Freetown, Sierra Leone working for a local newspaper where he covered the presidential election, public health, and the environment. When a mountainside collapsed, killing almost 1,000 people, he worked as a photojournalist for CNN and helped produce their broadcast coverage of the disaster. He's the most badass person, and we're assigning him to Slog AM hell to deal with you fucks.

Timothy is ready for all of the shit you can bring since he used to work in a scat lab at UW.

"I spent 10+ hours a week sorting, scooping, sifting, and genetically sequencing animal poop," Timothy told us. "We’re talking elephant poop, wolf poop, caribou poop, you name it. Orca poop was by far the worst."

Timothy's interests include but are not limited to "good local beer, groovy new music, and the impending doom of climate change that will alter the very world as we know it."

Here Timothy is before the Stranger and after the Stranger.

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Timothy Kenney

Okay, going on break! Happy holidays! Gotta catch Charles at the bar before my plane ride! You'll see some of us over the next two weeks on Slog. But, as for the rest, we'll see you in 2019, which can't be worse than 2018... right?