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Posts published in “Day: September 18, 2007”

Uneasy predictors

September 18, 2007

Never, never is it safe to predict conclusively who will get the nod when there's an appointment, by a governor or president or some other official, in the works. Such as today's appointment to the Idaho Supreme Court.

The Idaho Supreme Court, with its most recent departure - Justice Linda Copple Trout - lost the last justice who is a woman, and who has strong legal and personal experience in the northern part of the state - anywhere north of Boise. Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter had before him four candidates, two of whom were women (both, Darla Williamson and Juneal Kerrick, experienced district judges) and a veteran a well-connected attorney from the Panhandle (Kenneth Howard of Coeur d'Alene). We'd have guessed one of those three for the slot.

Otter's choice: The fourth, an Ada County district judge, Joel Horton.

Not that we have a problem with that: Horton is a well-regarded judge, and we're of the opinion that such qualities as geography and gender should take back seat to professional considerations.

A message to all those angling to figure who Otter will (likely) pick as the new U.S. senator from Idaho: Good luck.

The South Lake Union Trolley . . .

September 18, 2007

streetcar Yeah, that's the acronym, because that's what the new trolley in Seattle is called - it being a trolley and it running south of Lake Union down to downtown at Westlake Center . . . and Lake Union being, after all, a much more useful designator of location than downtown (or Cascade, which the private developer - Vulcan, Paul Allen's company, which being local ought to know better - insists on calling the area even though no one else does) . . . even though officialdom tried calling it not the Trolley but the Streetcar. (Contractors said that any effort to specifically avoid the acronym was just urban legend, but who knows?)

So the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports today, "in the old Cascade neighborhood in South Lake Union, they're waiting for the SLUT. At the Kapow! Coffee house on Harrison Street, they're selling T-shirts that read 'Ride the SLUT.'"

Starts running in December.