Dafydd at Big Lizards has a very thought provoking piece today:

Steyn is correct that there are many radical mosques in the United States; I've heard it said (I don't know if this is true) that there are more militant mosques in America than any other Western nation. These radical mosques contain radical imams who preach violent jihad as a matter of course.

Thus, for national security reasons, we should be surveilling every last one of these militant mosques, determined by our own intelligence operations (that is, sending loyal American Moslems into the mosques to listen to the sermons). From what I understand, they hardly hide their inflammatory opinions under a burning bush: it shouldn't be hard to decide that a mosque is "radical" if the imam says the congregation should financially support Hamas and encourage their children to become mall-martyrs.

The News Tribune reported today that Taylor Shellfish is going to be able to add 3 acres to its existing homes for obese (and vaguely obscene) bivalves in Puget Sound.

Of course, as is always the case when bureaucrats become involved there are STIPULATIONS:

In his Nov. 30 decision on the Taylor permits, Pierce County deputy hearings examiner Terrence McCarthy attached a long list of provisions requiring Taylor to minimize the aesthetic and environmental impacts of the operation.

To comply, Taylor must post a bond, protect eelgrass and fledgling eagles, use certain colors and types of gear, mark tubes and nets for easy identification and keep the beaches free of debris, among other things.

Now, I readily admit that several of those points make complete and total sense to me, even though Geoducks have a reputation as total "neat-freaks" in Clam circles, they should keep the beach tidy.

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

OLYMPIA — For the second year running, the Seattle Sonics are pushing for a new publicly financed arena — this time in Bellevue or Renton.

Why is it that multi-million dollar professional sports teams want somebody else to pay for their playgrounds? They already soak the public for the price of tickets, but they always want more. The Sonics want to tax people that don’t even watch basketball for the privilege of having them stay and extort more money from those same people later.

Bellevue or Renton would need authorization from the Legislature to raise local taxes for a new arena; a subsidy Bennett says is necessary to keep the team in the region.

The Sonics’ lease at KeyArena expires in 2010. The team has not said how much a new arena would cost, only that it wants the public to make a “significant contribution” to a new one.

First let me be clear, I do not think the entire Seattle School District is broken.  I sincerely believe that some of the schools are very good, including my child's elementary school.  My child gets a very good education and is light years ahead of where I was in first grade and is substantially ahead of many of the neighbor kids who go to private schools.  The problem with the Seattle School District is some of the schools are not educating the students and for most of those schools, that is a problem that the school district will never be able to fix because the problem is not within the schools walls.