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The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. -- Article II, Section 4

Costly facility for 1 high-risk sex offender By Jonathan Martin Seattle Times staff reporter Twenty-five surveillance cameras, 17 state employees, 12-foot security walls and a $1.6 million annual budget — all for one high-risk sex offender.

Do you think where you live is overpriced? You may be in for a shock. No matter how bad you think you may have it, it's a good bet that plenty of other Americans have it worse.

The use of profiling — based on race, ethnicity, nationality or religion — is necessary in a time of war, even in such an extreme case as the internment of thousands of Japanese on the West Coast during World War II, author Michelle Malkin told a Bothell crowd last night. Her controversial views, detailed in her book "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror," drew some 200 people to Cedar Park Church, many of them supporters. When naysayers challenged her thinking, many in the crowd applauded to cut them...

FERNDALE -- Talk about fighting fire with fire. Crews fighting a smoky, stinky blaze in the dried crust of a 3-acre manure lagoon on a dairy farm finished smothering the flames yesterday with more of the same -- a blanket of wet cow poop. Desperate times called for desperate measures, said Assistant Fire Chief Larry Hoffman with Whatcom County Fire District No. 7. Hoffman received an earful of complaints about the smoke and odor as the fire burned for four days on the farm outside Ferndale, northwest of Bellingham. "We're not the most popular department in town," he said. "It's...

It's only a matter of time before we witness another Howard Dean Moment in the Democratic presidential race -- but not, I predict, from any of the Democratic presidential candidates. Skulking in the campaign background is a ticking time bombette with a volatile temper and acid tongue who makes Dean look like Mr. Rogers on Prozac. She's the wife of front-runner Sen. John Kerry, Teresa Heinz. Formerly known as Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira, the hot-headed widow of the late Pennsylvania GOP Sen. John Heinz is self-aggrandizingly known among her wealthy liberal friends and fellow environmental radicals as "Saint Teresa" (and...

The potency of the marijuana grown locally and in British Columbia has attracted the attention of the White House and its drug czar. "This is not the substance you joked about in the '60s," said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We have a greater reason for concern." Walters visited Seattle yesterday to raise awareness of increased levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, an ingredient in marijuana that produces a high. And he met with officials from a new state program at Harborview Medical Center designed to counsel emergency room patients who abuse drugs....

President Bush signed into law yesterday an African trade agreement long championed by Seattle's lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott. But McDermott was not invited to the White House signing ceremony, a disappointing cap to years of effort. "It's too bad that kind of thing has to happen," said McDermott's spokesman, Mike DeCesare, who added that his boss was "disappointed." The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) maintains lower tariffs on garments manufactured in 37 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. McDermott is known in some diplomatic circle as the "father of AGOA" for his long support of the measure. But McDermott also...

Initiative 83, the "Monorail Recall" proposition, appears likely to have enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Initiative organizers yesterday turned in 22,300 petition signatures at Seattle City Hall. To qualify for the ballot, the measure needs 17,229 valid signatures of Seattle voters. The anti-monorail group will continue collecting more signatures this week for a cushion, since all initiative petitions wind up including invalid names. Still, there's no guarantee Seattle residents will go to the polls for a fourth monorail vote. The Seattle Monorail Project, along with pro-monorail environmentalists and landowners, is continuing to fight the initiative with two...

Five months until the election. Five uppity, prankish, seminude calendar photos plus cover shot. To pull it off, so to speak, will take a dozen Seattle women -- some in full, ripened bloom -- who are desperate enough to shed their clothes in the cause of stripping George W. Bush of the presidency. Keep your eyes peeled or avert them. The photo calendar called "Dames Demanding Democracy ... Because a True Democracy Has Nothing to Hide" is coming your way July 1, aimed at raising money for MoveOn, the PAC committed to ending the Bush regime. "I wanted to call...

In a speech to business leaders in India, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., gave credence to a rumor that the U.S. has captured Osama bin Laden and for political reasons is waiting for the right moment to reveal it, according to the Indo-Asian News Service. "There are already rumours circulating that Osama bin Laden is being held somewhere already and it's only that they are trying to decide what day they should bring him out," McDermott told Confederation of Indian Industry representatives at a luncheon in New Delhi on Thursday. The remarks came as McDermott told his audience that the loss...

At first glance, the glossy, purple map with mango-colored blocks and numbered dots looks like any other handy guide tucked in a bookstore's travel section. It lists places to visit, historical dates and various Seattle neighborhoods. But upon a closer look, "Claiming Space: Seattle's Lesbian and Gay Historical Geography," which was released last month, does much more. Members of The Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project have recorded personal stories, examined articles and confirmed information to produce a folding piece of paper that lists important places for Seattle -- and places that may have otherwise gone unnoticed and undocumented....

EVERETT, Wash. -- Washington became the latest state to ban pornography in prison on Wednesday, and prisoners will soon lose their smokes, too. The state prison system's new mail policy, barring any pictures showing full frontal nudity, went into effect May 1 but gave inmates two months get rid of their porn, Lynne DeLano, assistant deputy secretary of the Corrections Department, said Wednesday. The ban follows at least five years of complaints from prison staff who said pornography sometimes made prisoners aggressive and created a hostile work environment, she said. "It flew in the face of the principles of rehabilitation,"...

Now that Lollapalooza has been cancelled, I've got a great idea for a new Islamofest - check it out

Moore film's local angle By WYATT BUCHANAN SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore's new movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," features one of Washington state's best-known rabble-rousers: Rep. Jim McDermott. McDermott was interviewed at his office for the film and discusses the Patriot Act, the war on terror and the treatment of Iraq war veterans. Moore selected McDermott because of his background as a psychiatrist who worked with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, said Sarah Greenberg, a spokeswoman for Lions Gate Films, the movie's distributor. He is one of several members of Congress who appear in the...