Free Republic

SEATTLE — A federal judge has upheld a $15 million verdict against police in a small Washington state city who shot and killed an unarmed black man, in a ruling that blistered the city’s lawyers for suggesting jurors ruled against law enforcement only because they didn’t want to be known for siding with white officers. The ruling Thursday from U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein found that the jury had plenty of reasons to conclude that the shooting of Leonard Thomas during a 2013 SWAT operation in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood was outrageous, The Seattle Times reported. Thomas was unarmed,...

Washington Governor Claims ‘Just 59 Days’ To Save Children From Global Warming Michael Bastasch 4:47 PM 01/09/2018 Washington state’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee warned there was “just 59 days” to save future generations from “an endless cycle of crop-killing droughts one year, and rivers spilling their banks the next.” Inslee went on a lengthy Twitter rant in efforts to convince the state legislature to pass legislation to tax carbon dioxide emissions. Washington residents voted down Inslee’s last carbon tax plan by a wide margin in 2016. We have just 59 days to do our part to save our children from...

Boeing delivered a record number of commercial airplanes last year, the company reported Tuesday, firing up a rally in the company's stock. The aerospace giant delivered 763 planes, one more than its previous high set in 2015. The company's stock rallied after the report, closing up 2.7 percent at $318.43 and leading the Dow industrials higher. Boeing, whose shares have more than doubled over the last 12 months, said it booked orders for 912 commercial airplanes, the seventh highest annual total for the company.

A 34-year-old Pierce County sheriff’s deputy was killed while responding to a report of a home invasion near Frederickson late Sunday night, according to the sheriff’s department. The officer was identified by the sheriff’s department as Daniel McCartney of Yelm, a Navy veteran and a father of three young boys. One of two suspects was also killed during the exchange, according to the sheriff’s department. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department posted early Monday on its Facebook page that the deputy was shot just after 11:30 p.m. while responding to a report of an intruder at a residence on 200th Street...

A prominent donor to the Democratic Party says she is considering withdrawing support for senators who urged their colleague Al Franken to resign after he was accused of sexual misconduct. The donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, has been one of the Democratic Party’s most generous supporters for decades. In particular, she has been a champion of female politicians, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Last month, those senators were among the dozens who called for Franken to resign from the Senate after at least six women accused him of sexual harassment...

People are feeling sticker shock over Seattle’s sugary drink tax. You might’ve seen a picture circulating on social media that shows a more than $10 tax on a $15.99 case of Gatorade at Costco. On Friday, shoppers were taking their own pictures, stunned by the new prices. Advocates of the tax held a press conference on Friday, to explain how the city plans to use the $15 million expected to be raised from the tax in 2018. One Costco shopper loaded a case of Coca-Cola into her cart, not noticing the new price until KIRO7 pointed it out. “That much!”...

Senator Murray on DREAM Act: “We will get this done. We have to get this done.”

The Department of Health has passed a rule allowing a third gender option on Washington State birth certificates. Washington State residents will be able to change their gender to a third option — “X” — beginning on January 27. Proposed at the end of last August, the rule saw passionate public support as well as criticism. Today, a mere four months since it was proposed, the rule has passed. The “X” refers to all genders outside the gender-binary, or, in layman's terms, strictly male or female. The “X” casts a wide umbrella of non-binary options that would alleviate confusion and...

Washington state residents who don't identify as male or female will soon be able to choose X as their gender on birth certificates. Starting January 27, they will be able to identify as male, female or X on birth certificates. The policy lets Washingtonians change existing documents; it does not apply to new ones. The rule, announced Thursday by the state Department of Health, defines X as the following: A gender that is not exclusively male or female, including, but not limited to, intersex, agender, amalgagender, androgynous, bigender, demigender, female-to-male, genderfluid, genderqueer, male-to-female, neutrois, nonbinary, pangender, third sex, transgender, transsexual,...

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit against Motel 6, saying the budget motel chain is voluntarily handing personal information of thousands of guests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The curve where Amtrak Cascades 501 derailed Dec. 18, killing three people, was identified years ago as an obstacle to Washington state’s dream of creating high-speed rail. The corridor between Lakewood and Nisqually “includes unsuitable sharp curvature,” said the state’s long-range plan, written in 2006. “A new connection, largely on structure because of differences in elevation, with a speed limit of one hundred mph will be required.” Even with $800 million in Obama administration stimulus money, Washington state didn’t rebuild it. The state’s stimulus contracts, released through a public-records request, show the state made no promises to change the curve,...

The state of Washington has filed a consumer protection and civil rights lawsuit against the Motel 6 chain for violating customers' privacy. In September, Phoenix New Times revealed that employees at two Phoenix-area Motel 6s had been regularly sharing guest information with ICE. After our story was picked up by national news outlets, Motel 6 pledged to discontinue the practice and claimed that it had been "undertaken at the local level without the knowledge of senior management." We now have evidence that the same thing was happening in Washington. "It was not isolated to two hotels in Phoenix, not by...

YAKIMA, Wash. — The U.S. Supreme Court will not consider an appeal from a man convicted of killing an Outlook family when he was 14 years old.Joel Ramos had argued that a Yakima County Superior Court judge wrongfully sentenced him to consecutive adult sentences because he was a juvenile when the 1993 killings occurred. The court recently rejected his appeal, according to Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Brusic.“Our office noted that given the heinousness and premeditation in the murders Ramos committed, the courts would clearly reach the same result even if they started with a presumption against Ramos’ sentence,” Brusic...

According to a new report, Amazon employees appear to have been caught ‘purchasing services from trafficked sex workers.’ Engadget reports: The tech industry has a clear history of sexism and misogyny, but a recent Newsweek report highlights another problem. The publication got its hands on a slew of emails sent to brothels and pimps between 2014 and 2016 that document the industry’s patronage of brothels and purchasing of services from trafficked sex workers. Among the emails, which were obtained through a public records request to the King County Prosecutor’s Office, were 67 sent from Microsoft employee email accounts, 63 from...

Seattle got a Seahawks victory and snow fall on Christmas Eve, giving some folks in the Evergreen State their first white Christmas since 2008. The Emerald City’s odds of a White Christmas, which the National Weather Service defines as at least 1 inch of snow on the ground Christmas morning, are only about 7 percent, as reported by Q13 FOX. NWS Seattle reported 2.2 inches of snow at Sand Point with light snow continuing through the morning.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- An initial review of the data recorders and cameras on board the Amtrak train that derailed in DuPont on Monday suggests the train was going 78 mph in the moments before impact -- nearly 50 miles over the speed limit at that location -- and that the crew realized the speed was too high moments before, the NTSB announced Friday. Among the preliminary review, investigators concluded that the crew was not observed to be using any electronic devices before the crash, and that six seconds before impact, the engineer made a comment about going too fast. Investigators...

A conductor was in the cab with the train engineer before a deadly derailment in Washington state, a federal transportation board member said Tuesday, adding that the train’s brakes were eventually engaged automatically, not by the engineer. "Absolutely distraction is one of our most-wanted-list priorities at NTSB," National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said at a news conference Tuesday, although she added that the federal board has not determined a cause of the deadly accident outside Tacoma. Three people were killed when the Amtrak train headed from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, careened off a bridge at around 7:33 a.m....

Audio: Mayor predicted people will 'get killed' on Amtrak route "It’s virtually inevitable that someone is going to get killed that wouldn’t be killed otherwise," Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson warned WSDOT about the new high-speed route. Author: Susannah Frame Published: 10:37 PM PST December 18, 2017 Two weeks before a high-speed Amtrak train derailed near DuPont, Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson warned the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) that the route could be deadly without additional safety precautions.

The mayor of a city near the scene of Monday’s deadly train crash in Washington state warned earlier this month that the start of high-speed service was bound to end in disaster.During a Dec. 4 meeting of the Lakewood City Council, Mayor Don Anderson blasted plans by the Washington State Department of Transportation to let Amtrak trains travel through the city at up to 79 mph without first installing overpasses or other means of keeping motor vehicles and pedestrians away from the tracks.“Come back when there is that accident, and try to justify not putting in those safety enhancements, or...

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Many students are heading home for the holiday, and they were concerned given Monday's Amtrak derailment south of Seattle. "It's actually a little scary because my mom sent it to me and I am getting ready to go on the train," said Temple student Brandon Odems. "I think it's crazy and I really feel for those people and their families." Many couldn't help but think of the derailment of Amtrak train 188 here in Philadelphia just two and a half years ago. An attorney, who represented many of those victims, says he has a good guess as...