1. Lefty Seattle Displacement Coalition leader John Fox met with City Attorney Tom Carr and city council member Tim Burgess last night to talk about Burgess' proposed new restrictions on panhandling, which Carr—currently in a hot race for reelection against challenger Pete Holmes—supports.

According to Fox, Carr called the meeting, presumably to try to win the homeless advocate to his side; more details on how it went later today.

2. With recent polling numbers turning against her, Susan Hutchison—supposedly a favorite on the county's more-conservative Eastside—received another bit of bad news yesterday: Three Eastside papers, the Issaquah Press, the Mercer Island Reporter, and the SnoValley Star, have endorsed Hutchison's opponent, King County Council Member Dow Constantine.

3. Former Stranger crime reporter Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, who has an old-fashioned knack for on-the-ground reporting about gangs, crime, and shenanigans in the police department, has a new crime news blog, Seattlecrime.com.



The deeply-sourced Spangenthal-Lee launched the blog last night with a scoop about Angie's, a dive bar on the southern edge of Columbia City.

Spangenthal-Lee reports that City Attorney Tom Carr is opposing the renewal of Angie's liquor license, on the grounds that the bar "poses a detrimental impact [to] the safety, health, or welfare of the surrounding community."

Since the beginning of the year, Spangenthal-Lee reports, police have been called to Angie's at least eight times, for overservice, drug deals, and shots fired. Read the whole thing here.

4. For the second time in four months, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the lower federal court judge in Tacoma was wrong when he put pharmacy board rules guaranteeing a woman's access to the morning after pill on hold.

The Tacoma judge had ordered an injunction against the pharmacy board rules until the case itself (a challenge brought by Storman's Pharmacy in Olympia and two pharmacists who don't want to have to dispense Plan B) is settled.

Rejecting the plaintiffs' appeal to the earlier July ruling, the Ninth Circuit said yesterday:

"The [pharmacy board] rules do not aim to suppress, target, or single out in any way the practice of religion, but, rather, their objective was to increase access to all lawfully prescribed medications ... [the Tacoma judge ] erred in finding that access to Plan B was not a problem, especially given that state officials have already made findings suggesting the opposite."

5. Seattle PostGlobe founder Kery Murakami got a nice write-up in the Columbia Journalism Review, the nation's biggest trade journal for reporters and editors.

CJR web editor Justin Peters does a great job of catching Murakami's quirks—his "empathetically pessimistic demeanor," his "almost pathologically self-deprecating" personality, and—my favorite—the fact that his wallet is made of duct tape.

Not to mention his willingness to dish on his former workplace and colleagues:

“[Former P-I reporter]Andy Schneider’s a two-time Pulitzer winner,” Murakami says. “He’s got a blog that no one reads.”

The PostGlobe is his attempt to avoid a similarly obscure end. The site offers extensive reporting and commentary, both original and aggregated, on Seattle politics, sports, arts, and other topics of local interest (October 12th’s lead story: “Ever Wondered Why Cars Must Wait For Boats at Seattle-Area Bridges?”).

Although some former P-I colleagues contribute to the site, its tight budget (the “Jobs” link at the bottom of the PostGlobe home page leads to an error message) means that Murakami is its primary and often sole original reporter.

“If I look back at the times at the P-I when I used to bitch about shit, I wonder what the fuck I was thinking,” he says.

This morning's Morning Fizz is brought to you by Kay Smith-Blum for Seattle School Board.