Two members of the legislature get PubliCola’s Civil Liberties acCOLAde: Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36, Seattle) and Sen. Adam Kline (D-37, Seattle).

We chose Dickerson and Kline because they were not only important voices of reason in a session that was at times colored by panicky, reactionary rhetoric relating to public safety, but because they actually did heavy lifting to ensure that civil liberties were protected in Washington state.

Check out our Best Lobbyist , Tea Party, Policy and Biggest Loser acCOLAdes, too.

Rep. Dickerson spurred what was perhaps the first serious conversation in the legislature about legalizing marijuana, and by doing so made a similar discussion of decriminalizing pot possible, even getting national press.

She devised a plan to legalize, regulate, and tax the sale of marijuana at state liquor stores in the bill she filed before the 2010 session. Not only would the tax go to support underfunded drug and alcohol treatment programs, she said, but also it would keep prisons free of people put there for marijuana offenses.

In addition to convincing the chair of the Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness committee Rep. Chris Hurst (D-31) to give the bill a hearing—last year he wouldn’t allow even the decriminalization bill to have a hearing—she sold the bill well using a fiscal note that showed that, conservatively, a tax on marijuana sold at liquor stores could generate $300 million a biennium to help pay for drug and alcohol treatment, as well as health care.

Despite the fact that her legislation never made it out of committee, she plans to redraft it in the interim with changes based on public testimony. She said she’s also going to try to make an attempt at getting the bill to the floor from the House Judiciary Committee next year.

Sen. Adam Kline gets the nod for hedging the constitutional amendment on bail as the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee.

During the 2010 session, he told me that he felt he was a bit of a safety net, as the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, when it came to responsible criminal legislation that increased public safety while still protecting civil liberties.

“Those murders have created an atmosphere of fear, a desire for revenge,” he said. “Serious legislation in the criminal law field has become very difficult.”

But Kline thinks he managed to turn lemons into lemonade this year when it came to the constitutional amendment on bail.

On the face of it, it would appear as if any chance of restricting someone's constitutionally-granted right to bail would be an affront to civil liberties, but Kline believes the way he jimmy-rigged and passed the ballot measure—making it so only the worst felons who have shown concrete evidence of a propensity for violence if they are released on bail could be denied it--improves liberties for more people than it hurts.

"In a year as bad as this one looked to be, given the climate for stronger laws, people looking for greater security, it would have been enough to say that we didn’t let them (tougher laws advocates) score, that we didn’t allow them to narrow the civil liberties that people have in this state," he said. "We did better than that, we scored ourselves."

The ACLU had one major complaint about Sen. Kline this year, said its legislative director Shankar Narayan. Initially, he opposed any constitutional amendment on bail at all but eventually supported the measure, albeit an significantly tailored one.

We see it a little differently, however. Sen. Kline stood in the way of a reactionary piece of legislation that was supported by the governor and stemmed from some of the most highly publicized murders in Washington's history and significantly dampened any harmful effects it might have had on civil liberties. That's good, pragmatic politics.

If you don't buy our picks, here's the ACLU's shortlist of members who spoke up for civil liberties this session straight from the Washington chapter's communications director Doug Honig and Narayan:

Sen. Jeanne Kohl Welles (D-36, Seattle) for promoting the Senate's marijuana decriminalization bill and for helping pass a medical marijuana fix this session. A quick note: We chose Rep. Dickerson because she was the pioneer this session on marijuana policy reform and paved the way for related bills, such as Sen. Kohl Welles's to pass.

Rep. Brendan Williams (D-22, Olympia) for always saying very liberal things loudly.

Rep. Sherry Appleton (D-23, Bainbridge Island) for being a "voice of reason" on the House's Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness committee and for trying to restrict government surveillance.