Service outage

Hats off to Ingrid Ougland Sellie for this note on her Facebook page:

Dear World,

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located.  Replacement components were ordered Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, and installation is underway.  In early testing, the new equipment functioned beautifully, and it became fully operational on January 20, 2009.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage and we look forward to resuming full service and hopefully even improving it in years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The USA

Grass roots

Every now and then I encounter one of America’s great institutions and it reminds me again of what a great country this is. Haven’t felt that way too often in the last seven years, but today’s Democratic caucus was one of those moments.

Caucus!

On February 9 voters in Washington State get a shot at good old grass roots politics. We can attend the Democratic or Republican caucus in our local precincts and – for Democrats – select delegates to represent us at the district caucus. It’s a chance to hear