No one has pointed out that Paul Allen is busy buying another election. Having enjoyed the fruits of his first effort to squeeze money out of taxpayers for a new ballpark, Allen recently spent $700,000 paying signature gatherers to get a charter school initiative on the ballot. Now Allen has given another $2 million dollars to get the initiative passed. I-729 would siphon public money away from public schools and into 20 "public" charter schools. Heavily supported by Republicans, charter schools are opposed by teachers' unions because they uniformly benefit urban and suburban students from wealthy backgrounds. So far no one has proposed building one in Rainier Valley, in Tacoma's Hilltop area, or in rural Washington State. I-729 charter schools would charge no tuition, but there will undoubtedly be some kind of criteria for enrollment in these schools, and any scholastically-based criteria will favor students from well-funded school districts in the wealthier parts of Seattle and the state. If Paul Allen really cared about improving public schools, why not just skip the political machinations and donate the money directly to public schools? He needs to do some explaining.--Maria Tomchick

In case you haven't noticed, there's a genocide happening. The U.S. public, however, is blissfully oblivious, watching hour-after-hour of the quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and the mind-numbingly bad "Survivor," which is a metaphor for capitalist corporate relationships, set on a desert island. Fortunately, at least part of the world cares that thousands of people are still dying in Iraq from the brutal U.S.-imposed sanctions. One of them is Venezuela's controversial President Hugo Chavez, who became the first head of state to visit Iraq since the sanctions were imposed after the Gulf War a decade ago. Chavez was on a trip to visit all of the member nations of OPEC; he also made a stop in Libya to shake hands with Moamar Quaddafi. Happily, this made Madeline Albright furious. Russia's Vladimir Putin soon joined ranks with Chavez by sending the first international flight to Baghdad since the sanctions were imposed. Will the sanctions soon crumble? We'll see. Personally, I'm hoping they'll fall before the presidential election in November and force the Gorebot to defend the worst foreign relations policy since the Vietnam War. That would be worth watching.--M.T.

Last week, I had the unique displeasure of being part of a Seattle Weekly editorial board interview of senatorial candidates Maria Cantwell and Deborah Senn. The two Democratic candidates made such a bad impression that it was hard to believe that one of them is our only hope for unseating Slade Gorton. Senn whined that she was being outspent. Cantwell dodged around issues of Real Network's notorious violations of Internet privacy on her watch. Neither addressed the real differences between them on issues like NAFTA (Cantwell voted for it in Congress, Senn opposes) or Hanford (Senn opposes FFTF restart, Cantwell favors "limited restart," sort of like "limited pregnancy.") I wanted to like Senn the populist, even though her record for consumer advocacy as Insurance Commissioner is over-rated; or even Cantwell, whose millions are a better chance (in theory) for battling Gorton's corporate war chest. Their joint appearance left me with the grim conviction that we have a Strom Thurmond on our hands; Skeletor will die in office. --Geov Parrish

The way the FBI has treated Wen Ho Lee is a national scandal. Last week a federal judge ordered him released on bail, saying that the government's case "no longer has the requisite clarity and persuasive character" to keep him in jail. For those who have forgotten this poor guy's plight: he's a former scientist at Los Alamos who downloaded some information from a restricted computer onto ten backup tapes, took a couple of them home, and then destroyed the remaining tapes. He got caught up in right-wing Congressional hysteria over the possibility that nuclear and military secrets may have been leaked to China. Only one problem: everything Wen Ho Lee downloaded had already been published in trade journals and was public record. On top of that, the FBI agents in charge of the investigation have recently admitted in court that they lied about what he downloaded, when, why, and the reasons he gave for doing it. In other words, the poor sucker was a victim of institutionalized, law-enforcement racism, which seems to rear its ugly head everywhere, not just in Seattle.--M.T.

Speaking of ugly phenomena, Paul Schell reared his head last week to veto the repeal of the Teen Dance Ordinance. The council's new law would have allowed minors to attend music clubs frequented by adults and would have specified background checks for owners and operators of all-ages clubs. The new law is a long-awaited, reasonable response to the issue, and is what the city should have done back in 1985 when it was first faced with having to shut down The Monastery. Schell cited three reasons for the veto, two of which are key portions of the Teen Dance Ordinance. He might as well have said: "Screw you, I'm for the Teen Dance Ordinance." The repeal passed the council on a 7-1 vote. Supporters of the repeal need to get 6 city council members to vote to override the veto, and they may have some trouble. McIver and Compton are the swing votes: McIver wants to see a minimum age requirement for admission to clubs, and Compton is quickly becoming the Seattle Police Department spokesman on the council. Calls to McIver and Compton on this issue would be very helpful: McIver, 206-684-8800, and Compton, 206-684-8802 (e-mail them at richard.mciver@ci.seattle.wa.us and jim.compton@ci.seattle.wa.us). For city council junkies, there's a phone number you can call to get meeting dates, agendas, and other information: 206-684-8889. There's also a direct line through which you can listen to city council chamber proceedings: 206-684- 8566.--M.T. & G.P.