Smoking-ish

A friend of mine pointed me to this article from the PI about a ban on electronic cigarettes by King County. The underlying issue was whether or not to ban marketing of these things aimed at children and, given that they contain nicotine, I don't have any problem with that. My problem is with the provision (which passed 6 to 4) that banned their use anywhere that smoking is banned. I think that qualifies as unnecessary nanny stateism.

The deep bore tunnel and other things

I just came back from a debate hosted by Publicola and I had a great time. It seemed like most of the people in the audience were opposed to the tunnel, although it wasn't a huge margin by any means. It's hard for me to get too excited about the issues around replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct. From what I know, it seems like the tunnel is going to be very expensive and will probably not work nearly as well as what we have now. Additionally, by default position is to build fewer roads and more transit. So I would obviously prefer that we had gone with the surface/transit option.

That said, the viaduct does need to be replaced. One good earthquake and the thing is coming down and, although I wish things were different, a lot of people need to drive from West Seattle to downtown so its not like we can just close it and move on. The tunnel is the thing that could get funded, so I guess that's what we're going to build.

On a different note, it looks like Obama's tax compromise has passed. Good for rich people, I guess. Not so good for the rest of us. Who cares about the deficit anyway? Certainly not the Republicans. It certainly would be horrible if taxes returned to the levels they were at in the 90s. The economy was really horrible back then.

Two thoughts in my head at the same time

There seems to be a lot of angst in the world regarding Julian Assange. There seems to be an expectation that everyone take an extreme stance about him. Either he is a courageous freedom fighter incapable of wrongdoing, or he is complete scum. I don't get it.

It looks like Assange, like everyone else in the world, is a really complicated person. On the one hand, Wikileaks has been, in my opinion at least, a more or less good thing. Most of the leaks regarding the US haven't been all that surprising, although it sure has shown everyone how important it is that government reevaluate the procedures surrounding classified information. Some of what Wikileaks has shown needed to be exposed, such as that video of soldiers shooting reporters from a helicopter. On the other hand, he is almost certainly a rapist.

There is not really such a thing as "sex by surprise," as some of insisted is the charge against him. He is charged with not using a condom when he said he would in one case and not stopping after the condom broke, despite the woman's insistence that he do, in the other case. That means that, at some point, he was having sex with a woman without her consent. That is rape. He should stand trial and, if convicted, go to jail for a long time. But the reason he should go to jail is not because published documents given to him by a source. The reason he should go to jail is because he's a rapist.

I am perfectly capable of applauding his actions regarding Wikileaks while deploring his treatment of women.