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After touching down around 3:15 p.m. at Boeing Field, Obama's first stop will be to a mansion in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood where 250 people will attend a fundraiser. From there, he'll head to former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal's Eastside home at Hunt's Point for a fundraiser there.

Man sets house afire trying to kill spider with lighter, spray paint SEATTLE -- Fire officials say a West Seattle man was using a lighter and a can of spray paint to kill a spider in his laundry room when the house went up in flames. Fire crews were called to a home in the 10200 block of 34th Avenue SW just before 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Firefighters originally battled the blaze from a distance after learning there may be ammunition inside. Crews were eventually able to extinguish the fire, but not before it did significant damage to the structure....

When Seattle passed their new city council ordinance mandating a staged increase in the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour, many local businesses – as well as observers across the nation – were left shaking their heads. The rules seemed to be unevenly applied, with some businesses having to comply but not others, as well has having a complete disregard for whether or not the job providing entities would be able to remain competitive and survive under the new rules. As Reuters reports, a coalition of business owners are now moving to exercise the power of public support to...

Ali Muhammad Brown was charged with executing two gay men in Seattle. Brown was previously prosecuted federally following an FBI probe into an Islamic group suspected of supporting jihadists overseas. This devout Muslim is also a registered sex offender for crimes against a 6-year-old girl, the same age as Aisha when Muhammad married her. He was previously prosecuted as part of a federal investigation into a sleeper cell thought by investigators to be linked to a terrorism funding organization. “One prominent member of the group is thought to have been killed waging jihad in Somalia after fleeing prosecution in the...

For LGBTQ couples who met that special someone over Pride weekend — or who already have but just haven’t set the date — Seattle’s tourism agency will be awarding four free wedding trips to LGBTQ couples in a sweepstakes that starts July 1. Sponsored by Visit Seattle, the hosted trips include the opportunity to be married by Seattle’s first openly gay mayor, Ed Murray, along with air transportation provided by Alaska Airlines, a four-night stay at the Renaissance Seattle Hotel, a wedding ceremony at Canlis restaurant, DJ and music, wedding photography, sparkling wine courtesy of Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, beer...

Thieves attempt carjacking, but can’t get away in a stick shift SEATTLE – A 70 year old woman is stopped by three young men with a gun right outside her Seattle home. They got her keys, but they didn’t get away with her car. That’s because when the would-be thieves got in Nancy Fredrickson’s car, they discovered it was a stick shift. None of them knew how to drive a manual, so they ended up ditching the car and running away. Nancy Fredrickson had just returned home yesterday afternoon, after buying some things at a garage sale. She was getting...

Seattle recently raised the minimum hourly wage that employers in the city must pay to $15. That puts Seattle out in front in America’s Living Wage Derby – hooray! Mayor Ed Murray boasts that the high minimum wage makes his city “the model for the nation.” Not only that, but the big increase, over Washington state’s minimum wage of $9.32 per hour will, he says, enable the city to “regain economic strength.” Great objectives, Mr. Mayor, but I don’t know why you’re being so stingy. You have at best taken a baby step towards fairness for workers and economic vitality....

t's not like a player would ever forget winning the Super Bowl, but it's nice to have a giant diamond ring there to remind you. Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen revealed his team's ring. Unlike a lot of Super Bowl rings, it's kind of cool, or at least not overdone and as tacky as some of them are.

Jesse Brisbin, a 30-year-old twice-convicted sex offender allegedly attempted to abduct a six-year-old girl from a Seattle park on Thursday evening, but he picked the wrong park to act on his compulsion. According to witnesses, he made it about three blocks with the girl after grabbing her by the hand and wrapping his shirt around her face before a group of about 20 neighborhood children and adults caught up with him. According to the Seattle Police Department, the six-year-old girl broke free and Brisbin tried to run away. The men tackled Brisbin, who lives only about a half-mile from Benefit...

A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday challenges Seattle’s adoption of what would be the nation’s highest minimum wage as unfair to small franchises. […] In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the International Franchise Association, a Washington, D.C.-based business group, said the ordinance “unfairly and irrationally discriminates against interstate commerce generally, and small businesses that operate under the franchise business model specifically.” …

Mix-A-Lot invited women to join him onstage, where he was backed by an orchestra. "Since tonight is orchestral movements from the hood night, I'm going to leave some of this open if a couple of ladies would like to get up on the stage," he told the audience. "Many musical innovations have been made in hip-hop music that can bring new energy, sounds and rhythm to the classical world."

It didn’t take long after yesterday’s shotgun attack by a non-student at Seattle Pacific University for word to get out that the brave actions of students ended the attack before far more people could be injured or killed. The friends of the first man to go after the armed suspect quickly identified the bashful hero to the world via Twitter.

The gun lovers who preach that arming American citizens to stop even more violence always ignore the fact that Wayne LaPierre was wrong. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice president, infamously said after a gunman in 2012 killed 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, Conn. Yet looked what happened Thursday. According to police, a student building monitor named Jon Meis used pepper spray to subdue a shooter who had already killed one student and wounded a couple others at Seattle...

Seattle police are investigating a shooting at Otto Miller Hall on the Seattle Pacific University Campus. Officials say there appears to be seven victims; no fatalities.

Hippie infestation. Seattle’s city council on Monday unanimously approved an increase in the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, making it the nation’s highest by far. The increase was formally proposed by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, and his spokesman said he intends to sign the ordinance on Tuesday. Apparently unaware that it doesn’t have the weather advantages that other places pricing themselves out of existence do (Los Angeles, anyone?), Seattle seems to be ready to set a record for how many businesses it can ruin. The earnest idiots who whip up this minimum wage frenzy always use big corporations...

In their reporting of Seattle’s unanimous vote Monday to raise the minimum wage within Seattle to $15 per hour, USA Today began their article with an interview of a $9.47/hour, economically-uneducated McDonald’s employee: “Martina Phelps says the Seattle City Council's vote today on a historic plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour could change her life.” Well, yes, it could, Martina, but probably not in the way you were hoping. The city council of Seattle, composed of the kind of politicians who learned everything they know about economics from studying celebrity gossip and attending union meetings, believes...

Should San Diego match Seattle's $15 per hour minimum wage? Poll here

At the start of the year, the Seattle suburb of SeaTac raised the area’s minimum wage to $15, and the consequences are now starting to be felt. And it’s not just the unions who championed the effort, or those who still have jobs, that are feeling them. Over the last few months, a few things have happened: Managers have taken more responsibilities on themselves, instead of hiring more workers. Businesses have laid off workers, or eliminated their plans to hire more. Area parking now comes with an added “living-wage surcharge.” Hotels have cut employee benefits, free food, and overtime. Shocking:...

Last January, SeaTac implemented a $15 per hour minimum wage for hospitality and transportation workers. The consequences to the drastic hike in wages are just beginning to be realized—and it’s not pretty. A writer for NW Asian Weekly recently blogged about her experience attending an event at a SeaTac hotel. She asked employees if they were “happy with the $15 wage.” The ensuingconversations, “It sounds good, but it’s not good,” the woman said. “Why?” I asked. “I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,” she responded. “No more free food,” she added. “The hotel used to feed her. Now, she...

Last week, Michigan became the latest of a handful of states to officially raise its minimum wage this year, with a gradual four-year phase-in that will take its floor from $7.40 up to $9.25 an hour — but over in the city of Seattle, things just got real. Say hello to what will soon become the highest minimum wage in the nation, via the AP: The issue has dominated politics in the liberal municipality for months. Mayor Ed Murray, who was elected last year, had promised in his campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. A newly...

The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Monday to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, equaling the highest minimum wage in the nation. The law will phase in the higher wages over a three- to seven-year window, depending on the size of a company. Corporations that employ more than 500 workers will have to pay $15 an hour by 2017 if their employees don’t receive company-paid health care. Smaller businesses can wait until 2019 to reach the higher rate. All workers will receive the highest wage by 2021. “The people who work for a living have basically seen no...

**SNIP** "If stimulating the economy were just as easy as taking from Jim and giving to Joe, don't you think communism would've worked out? Thanks progressive lefties, I'm sure this is making businesses feel secure about moving into Seattle. "Silliness," Shapiro concluded. Boze wondered why Seattle didn't just force the $15 wage immediately, if 70 percent of voters like it. In fact, Thursday's committee compromise is a disaster for the $15 Now group, which is pushing a ballot initiative for November that would enact the $15 wage on Jan. 1, 2015. "They're not interested in income equality," Boze said. "They're...

Well that’s determined by all sorts of variables – how much the person seeking the job is willing to take, how much the person wanting the job done is willing to pay, the scarcity or abundance of labor, etc.. And so in a free market, when a job is open it is up to the person seeking to have the work done and the person seeking a job to decide what it is worth to each of them. If they can reach agreement, then the job is offered to the person seeking the job. If agreement can’t be reached, then...

An ordinance that gradually increases the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 an hour was approved Thursday by a City Council committee, setting up a full council vote next week. In a boisterous meeting, City Council members approved a delay to the implementation of the ordinance, from Jan. 1, 2015 to April 1, 2015.

More than 100 officers from the Seattle Police Department are suing the city and the Justice Department, claiming their department's new use-of-force policies put them in danger and violate their constitutional rights. In 2012 Seattle officials agreed to an independent monitor and court oversight of the city's police department as part of a deal with the Justice Department following a report that found officers routinely used excessive force. The civil suit, which was filed Wednesday, names Attorney General Eric Holder, the City of Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray, City Attorney Pete Holmes, and federal monitor Merrick Bob. In the suit, the...

Seattle broke its record for rainfall from February through July last Sunday — with more than two months to spare, according to the National Weather Service. As of Sunday, 22.87 inches of rain had fallen at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport since Feb. 1, surpassing the record set in 1972 when 22.81 inches of rain fell from Feb. 1 to July 31, weather-service meteorologist Josh Smith said Tuesday. Fifteen inches is the average rainfall from February through July at the airport, which is where Seattle’s official weather data are recorded. “Basically, we are well ahead of normal rainfall for February to July,” Smith...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Chipotle is asking customers not to bring firearms into its stores after it says gun rights advocates brought military-style assault rifles into one of its restaurants in Texas.</p> <p>The Denver-based company notes that it has traditionally complied with local laws regarding open and concealed firearms.</p>

By Dan SpringerPublished May 08, 2014FoxNews.comFacebook476 Twitter508 Gplus0 At 57 feet in diameter, it's touted as the world's biggest tunneling machine. It was even given a name, Bertha. But now, after digging just over 1,000 feet, Bertha is broken down and stuck underneath Seattle's downtown waterfront. And fixing the massive mess could cost taxpayers millions. The tunneling machine is the key workhorse in a $3.1 billion tunnel project aimed at replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct, a double-decker elevated highway that was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. Bertha's meltdown, though, has put the project in jeopardy of being the West...

One of the most liberal Representatives in Congress wants California to raise its minimum wage to $26 an hour. Appearing on Crossfire on Friday, co-host Newt Gingrich asked Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) whether it was a good idea for the mayor of Seattle to propose a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Lee said, "good for him." "In California, more than likely from what I remembered, a living wage where people could live and take care of their families and move toward achieving the American dream was about $25, $26 an hour," Lee said. When pressed further, Lee said she...

Last November, Seattle elected a straight-up socialist to their City Council who, among other economic/social-justice aspirations, included the already popular idea of a minimum wage hike to $15/hour in her campaign platform. Evidently, the fact that that is now very likely going to happen in a gradual phase-in over the next few years isn’t quite good enough for her, via the NYT: Mayor Ed Murray presented on Thursday what he described as an imperfect but workable plan to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal minimum wage and one of the highest anywhere...

Mayor Ed Murray delivered a major May Day victory for Seattle’s low-wage workers on Thursday, with a plan that will move big business and small business to a $15-an-hour minimum wage, over a sliding scale of three to seven years. “In seven years, the minimum-wage worker in Seattle will earn $6,200 more than a minimum-wage worker elsewhere in Washington, assuming a 30-hour week,” Murray said. He described unveiling of the plan as an “historic moment for Seattle.” A social gospel Catholic, Murray quoted Pope Francis on social justice and income inequality. He was followed shortly to the podium by ultra...

Editor’s Note: Kshama Sawant is a Seattle councilwoman. And a Socialist. She was elected last fall on a $15-an-hour minimum wage platform. That wage, which is 62 percent higher than this year’s inflation indexed state minimum wage of $9.32, already the highest in the nation, comes from what researchers at the University of Washington have calculated as the wage it takes to be self-sufficient in the area. The Seattle suburb of SeaTac, home of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, narrowly approved a $15 minimum wage ballot initiative last fall, but as we recently explored, most airport workers have yet to see a...

SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has scheduled a news conference for Thursday to announce a plan to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. **SNIP** Committee members representing business and labor could not agree on issues like crediting tips and benefits against the $15 minimum. And council member Kshama Sawant revealed another hurdle -- she said there has been little talk of automatically increasing the minimum wage with inflation. “If going forward the new minimum wage does not have a cost of living increase attached to it every year of the phase in it's not going to...

The Planned Parenthood abortion business in Seattle, Washington is taking a page out o the religious bigotry book in order to raise funds for itself. Tomorrow night, the abortion corporation will stage “Bar Nun Bingo” at and, two days later, with hold another “Bar Nun Bingo” — fundraising events that, as Bill Donohue of the Catholic League tells LifeNews in an email, are aimed squarely at Catholics: barnunbingoBoth fund-raising events will bash nuns, and will be led by the demonstrably anti-Catholic gay group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Pictures of previous “Bar Nun Bingo” affairs show how sick it is. Planned...

A property rights fight near Seattle's waterfront will continue, despite the death of the property owner. Late last year, the Seattle City Council voted to used its powers of eminent domain to take the parking lot owned by a 103-year-old Spokane woman named Myrtle Woldson. The city asked her to sell. She refused. So the city council simply voted to condemn the property and take it.

Mayor Ed Murray’s minimum wage advisory committee is “deadlocked,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant said Friday, with the socialist officeholder pledging she will now work to “build a strong coalition in the streets.” Sawant and two other left-leaning City Council members sit on the panel, which is co-chaired by business leader Howard S. Wright III, CEO of Seattle Hospitality Group, and Service Employees Union leader David Rolf, the city’s most able labor leader. The statement by Sawant comes amids increasing indications that Seattle voters will have the final say on on the minimum wage issue. And, like Washington voters...

Homeless Tent Cities have proven a disaster in Seattle, Portland, Sacramento and other mainland cities where they have been tried. Homelessness Industry organizers set up their tents in an area--and the meth-addled denizens generate a crime wave targeting local businesses and residents as they seek out anything they can steal to buy drugs. Exasperated local officials pay the organizers off in order to get them to move into a different jurisdiction where the cycle of crime and shakedown begins again. In Honolulu, unofficial tent cities are now set up in strategic locations designed to pressure the tourism industry, the Chinatown...

In the largest award of its kind in the US, ousted InfoSpace chief Naveen Jain has been ordered to pay $247 million to the company that he founded as penalty for violating laws against "short swing trading". The order by a federal judge is a body blow for a man who took his Seattle-based Internet company to great heights in a space of four years before it crashed like most of its peers during the dotcom bust. The company board fired Jain last December. But Jain, who went ahead and founded Intelius after the ouster, is not giving up just...

John and Tom talk with Bill Stainton, former Executive Producer of "Almost Live!", about a legendary 1989 April Fool's prank (involving the Space Needle).

“Onto the ballot – into the streets.” That’s the headline for the next big moment for 15 Now – a conference on April 26 to kick-off a mass campaign in Seattle to collect 50,000 signatures for a robust $15 minimum wage ballot initiative. Whether or not 15 Now will file those signatures in June, triggering a popular vote on November 4, depends on whether the City Council passes a real $15 minimum wage ordinance and will be decided by a democratic 15 Now conference in June. The credible threat of a winnable ballot initiative is the best tool – under...

Even hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour may not be enough to allow low-wage workers to afford rent in Seattle, according to a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The group says a full-time worker in the Seattle-Bellevue metro area needs to earn $21.60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s the so-called housing wage that the group calculates. In Washington state, the housing wage is $18.65 per hour. The group estimated that the worker spends no more than 30 percent of his or her income on rent and utilities. For the price of...

(CNN) -- A devastating landslide in Washington state killed three people Saturday and sent rescuers desperately digging for people crying for help underneath debris, authorities in Washington state said. The landslide cut off a small town and a river and prompted an evacuation notice for fear of a potentially "catastrophic flood event," authorities said. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said, in addition to those dead, seven adults and a 6-month-old boy were rescued and sent to local hospitals. Harborview Medical Center in Seattle reported that five patients had been airlifted there and were in its care. Three of those --...

SEATTLE — The leading proponent of a $15 an hour minimum wage in Seattle was challenged face-to-face today. Kshama Sawant engaged with small businesses owners worried about their survival. The impromptu meeting came after a City Council briefing on the implications of raising the minimum wage 63 percent, from $9.32 an hour to $15. “Despite all the rhetoric I'd like to understand the facts of what these other cities do and how they define the various terms that they use in the minimum wage ordinances,” said Council President Tim Burgess at the briefing. “My argument here is there's just not...

Three people were killed and eight were injured in a mile-long mudslide near Seattle that completely demolished at least six houses Saturday morning and caused flooding.

Kshama Sawant has held office less than three months, but the Seattle City Council socialist wants her newly unveiled $15-an-hour minimum wage plan to be “the main agenda item” as Mayor Ed Murray’s income advisory committee meets next week. **SNIP** She would implement a $15-an-hour minimum wage for “big business” on Jan. 1, 2015, with prescribed cost of living increases after that. There would be no credit for tips paid to restaurant and hotel workers, no teenage wage and no training wage. “Small business” would be allowed a three-year phase-in, starting with an $11-an-hour minimum wage next January. Full implementation...

Very sad about the copter crash in Seattle the other day, with loss of life, but here is my input as a former Army/Vietnam aviator. As the eye-witness accounts said that the copter, which looked liked a Bell Ranger, or an OH-58 as I remember it, they said that as the copter lifted off of the helipad it dipped and started to rotate, which may be a sign of a tail rotor failure. If the tail rotor failed for some reason, there is no control of left/right lateral movement. The copter is then helpless and out of control, and it...

Irrepressible and a new father at age 86, having served time for extortion, former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards is seeking a comeback by running for an open seat in Congress. Edwards has not lost a step. “I did not vote for Obama: Where I was there were no voting machines,” said the conservative Democrat, who was in federal prison at the time. Edwards was accompanied by his 35-year-old third wife, Tina, and infant child. “There’s a guy in Florida 101 years old running, and by the time I am his age I’ll be in my seventh term,” said Edwards, who...

KOMO TV Seattle news helo crashes feet from studios. Ywo confirmed dead. One critical Live link http://www.komonews.com/live

Seattle Monday became the first city in the country to limit drivers for Lyft, uberX and Sidecar, in what will eventually be an overhaul of all of the city’s ride-service rules. The regulations, approved unanimously by the City Council, will limit each company to 150 drivers on the road at the same time, collectively capping them at 450.

Two people were killed and one was critically injured when a news helicopter crashed and burned Tuesday morning on Broad Street only yards away from the Space Needle. Emergency personnel immediately rushed to the scene. Two cars were struck in the crash. One man could be seen running from from one of the cars with his sleeve on fire, and he was extinguished by officers at the scene.