We are still waiting to see how many votes Nymia the Dog garnered in her write-in campaign for County Prosecutor.  We do know that there were about 76,000 ballots cast and Prosecutor McEachran gained only 52,000 votes running unopposed.  Inquiring minds want to know whether one third of voters didn't bother to vote for McEachran or if they made an extra effort to pick the dog.  Citizens deserve to know.  So does the dog.

Before the election, I wrote a article promoting Nymia based on the story of Mike Grundy, a black man with the misfortune of having attracted the prosecutor's attention.  His extraordinary treatment began with cozy relations between the judge, who systematically denied any mitigating evidence and refused to properly instruct the jury, and the prosecutor, who refused any reasonable plea bargain.  Both allowed an improper trial and set bail at an unachievable level to assure they could ruin the kid's life and that he would spend the full sentence in jail before his case could come up on appeal.

Well, the kid served his time, the case was remanded for correction on appeal, and now the prosecutor is determined to waste more money punishing the lad with further prosecution on the fullest possible charge. There is no way a black man is going to strike a white man without being made an example in Bellingham.  By comparison, a white man can break into someone's home, pistol whip and threaten to shoot the occupants, steal their money  and receive a lesser charge than a black man who takes a wild swing while surrounded by whites threateningly calling him "nigger".  Go figger.

Now comes the attorney for the defendant, with a letter suggesting that this man's treatment has been racist throughout.  McEachran steps in, taking over from the assigned prosecutor to reply that the allegation is "preposterous", that the defendant can take or leave the prosecutor's offer because he is perfectly willing to squander pubic funds excoriating the black man who accidentally broke a football jock's jaw. If there is something preposterous here, that is it.

In the wake of racial tensions in Ferguson, MO, Brad Heath of USA Today dug into the data and discovered there are places far more racist than Ferguson.  In fact, 1,581 of 3,538 jurisdictions examined arrest blacks at rates even more disproportionately than in Ferguson.  Guess what?  Bellingham is one of them, so just how preposterous are the defense attorney's comments?  Ferguson arrests blacks three times as often as non-blacks.  In Bellingham, blacks are arrested five times more frequently.

Bellingham was once home to one of the largest Washington State chapters of the Klu Klux Klan.  Some suggest that while Klan activity has shrunk from sight, the chapters themselves never really disappeared, and that many have served in public offices as mayors, prosecutors, judges and representatives in congress.

It would be nice to believe this scourge has been eradicated, but cases like Grundy's make it hard to believe.  Research like Heath's make it unfortunately impossible.