By then Moyer had already pitched in the majors for 10 years and was a known quantity.  Or, as he puts it, "I wasn't a prospect, I was a suspect—someone they didn't trust."  Yet that time spent as a journeyman had also given him the chance to do something he does as well as anyone in the league: collect data.  "When you're in the big leagues, you have access to all the knowledge and all the info in the world," says Aaron Sele, a good friend who pitched with Moyer in Boston and Seattle.   "That doesn't mean people are going to digest it. But Jamie devours it."

Around [his wife] Karen are more than a dozen people who have flown out for the game, all part of Team Moyer.  There's Larry Platt, editor of the Philadelphia Daily News and co-author of Moyer's upcoming memoir; Moyer's parents; his sister, Jill; and two members of the Moyer Foundation, the philanthropic group that Jamie and Karen founded in 2000 that funds camps around the country for children dealing with the loss of a parent or one with substance-abuse problems.  Also present are six of his kids, including the two daughters he and Karen recently adopted from Guatemala, and the family's realtor, who helped the Moyers find the $1.8 million home in Cherry Creek that they're renting while he pursues this last chance with the Rockies.

The Citizen revealed last week how newly-elected Margaret Burke was a co-leader of the city’s November 9th Society in the 1980s.

Then called Margaret Flynn, she and her former husband Terry recruited a 50-strong army of skinheads to daub buildings with swastikas and hand out racist literature.

Fifty percent of Americans now have a favorable opinion of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, up from 39% in February and his highest by 10 percentage points.  His current 41% unfavorable rating, though, leaves him with a net score of +9, after being at -8 in February.  In roughly half of the 28 measurements Gallup has taken of Romney since 2006, more Americans have viewed him negatively than positively.

In the 111th Congress, Jay inslee voted with his party leadership, that is to say, Nancy Pelosi, 99 per cent of the time.  He had decided, for whatever reasons, to follow her lead, to become a junior congressman representing her district, rather than represent Washington's 1st district.

If any of our local reporters think that Inslee's record is a legitimate issue in the governor's race, they may want to ask him why he spent that session of Congress representing San Francisco, rather than Bainbridge Island, Shoreline, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Bothell, Kirkland, and Redmond.

And if they are really enterprising, they may want to ask him whether he voted for Pelosi in the last leadership contest, and, if so, why.  (The votes in these leadership contests are secret, but we know that Heath Schuler received 43 votes.  Was one of those Inslee's?)

The current Almanac of American Politics has just two brief paragraphs on Inslee's accomplishments, but there is still enough there for reporters to begin asking him questions.  If, that is, they think questions about his record are legitimate.

A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting.  If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.

There is, of course, no assurance that the special prosecutor handling the case, State Attorney Angela Corey, will do the right thing.  Because until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful and professional.

The liberal media took another stunning defeat Tuesday as Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace totally demolished the BBC's Katty Kay on Jeopardy!.

For more than three years now, the Senate Democratic leadership, including our own senior senator, Patty Murray, has refused to even present a budget resolution — as required by law.

Since the Republican takeover of the House in the 2010 election, the Republican majority has presented a budget plan that would, according to official estimates, let us avoid national bankruptcy.  The Ryan plan may not be perfect — unlike all the other plans — but it should have been a place to start serious negotiations.

Instead, President Obama has, after one failed attempt to negotiate a grand bargain with the Republicans, gone back to nearly full-time campaigning.  Anyone who looks at his daily schedules, as I do from time to time, will notice that he rarely even meets with congressional leaders, much less spends the time necessary to work out a compromise.  I have my disagreements will all four of Obama's immediate predecessors, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2, but all of them were willing to try to achieve compromises on budgets, and all of them succeeded, to some extent.

President Obama is not even willing to try.

So who does the Seattle Times attack? Speaker Boehner.

That editorial attack is simply bizarre.

Cross posted at Sound Politics.

The British government is making urgent preparations to cope with the fallout of a possible Greek exit from the single currency, after the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, warned that Europe was "tearing itself apart".

Reports from Athens that massive sums of money were being spirited out of the country intensified concern in London about the impact of a splintering of the eurozone on a UK economy that is stuck in double-dip recession. One estimate put the cost to the eurozone of Greece making a disorderly exit from the currency at $1tn, 5% of output.

A budget resolution based on President Obama’s 2013 budget failed to get any votes in the Senate on Wednesday.

In a 99-0 vote, all of the senators present rejected the president’s blueprint.

It’s the second year in a row the Senate has voted down Obama’s budget.

Obama's 2012 budget failed 97 to 0 last May after Obama himself last April said he wanted deeper deficit cuts.

If they prevented the common practices, imaginative precinct captains would merely turn to others.  In some wards, politically obligated doctors signs stacks of blank affidavits, attesting to the illness of people they have never seen, thus permitting the precinct captain to vote the people in their homes as absentee voters for reasons of illness. (p. 77)