Good News, Bad News

It's one of those news days, folks. We may as well lead with the Least Bad News, as it dominates the headlines today:

• Crap... Anybody seen a big wooden stick, about three feet long, nasty looking knot on the end? It's the official shilelagh of Seattle, and it's been stolen, like it is every year. But this year's theft appears not to be the work of the mischievous leprechauns responsible every other year, and if it's not returned to the Friends of St. Patrick, we're going to have to cancel St. Patrick's Day in Seattle FOREVER. Won't someone please think of the problem drinkers?
• They shoot sea lions, don't they? Yes, they do, and it's not even the ones that are killing chinook salmon in the Columbia - these appear to be just normal, everyday law-abiding sea lions who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• See what happens when you give all your money to charity, Bill Gates? Now Carlos Slim, who is not a loan shark, as his name would have you believe, but instead a Mexican telecommunications mogul, is the richest person in the world. Are you happy now?
• Kirkland investor/scam artist Rhonda Breard has gone from being merely under investigation to thoroughly under arrest. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one, marking the line between her investors savings being 'probably gone' and 'definitely, totally gone.'
• Stealing someone's identity? Pretty bad. Stealing the identity of someone's dead child for a tax write-off? Worse by orders of magnitude, and not just a couple.
• A Portland man has been arrested in Kent for pimping out a 15-year-old girl.
• And last but not least, a Seattle woman has been charged with poisoning her newborn daughter with methadone.

• Well, the Seahawks seem to be getting more serious about bringing some new blood in at quarterback - but are the Browns Derek Anderson or Chargers backup Charlie Whitehurst supposed to be viable long term options?
• A Seattle laboratory has sequenced the genome of a family of four, a feat that may lead to further insight into hereditary genetic ailments.
• Amazingly, no kids were seriously hurt when their school bus rolled off the road in Skagit County.