Paid family leave is not a priority
Legal protections for those needing family leave to be with a newborn or care for a sick family member have already been enacted by Congress.
Who owns your DNA? Not who you think
Asked in 1955 whether his polio vaccine was patented, Jonas Salk replied, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” With that, Salk debunked the misguided notion of patenting objects found in nature.
Why South Korea has already won
On March 30, three days after North Korea severed a military hotline with the South and announced that South Korean President Park Geun-hye “will meet a miserable ruin,” the country declared a state of war. “The time has come to stage a do-or-die final battle,” an official statement said.
Sacramento plays NBA politics well
SEATTLE — In the scoring of the Seattle-versus-Sacramento reality show, who wants to win an NBA team the most probably doesn’t rate up there in importance with, say, who has the shiniest billionaires.
Is state budget being cut or are words being parsed?
As we’ve all heard from the folks in Olympia who are trying to craft a state budget, times are still lean. Revenue isn’t meeting expectations and cuts must be made.
Examination of retirement abuse casesis welcome
In the wake of Associated Press reporter Mike Baker’s in-depth look at 11th-hour pay raises that helped to significantly boost local firefighters and police officers pensions, the director of the state Department of Retirement Systems is now examining the cases detailed in Baker’s articles.
Still time to do good things - and bad - for education
OLYMPIA — Legislators got to legislate, governors got to govern.
To deliver or not to deliver mail Saturdays?
The U.S. Postal Service, like newspapers or the electric company, don’t usually garner much public sympathy. Folks take mail service for granted when things go well but are outraged (or worse) when their mail isn’t delivered on time.
Cost of war lingers long after last shots fired
The US now spends $140 billion a year compensating war veterans, a figure that is expected to rise dramatically.
The human cost of war — any war — is enormous. People are killed and wounded. Lives are forever changed.
MLB mandates safer helmets
One of the obstacles to curbing sports concussions is fashion. Seriously.
