1. A federal judge heard initial arguments in a lawsuit filed by Village Voice Media's Backpage.com today. Backpage, the online classified site for the VVM chain (which includes Seattle Weekly ) is asking the judge to overturn legislation passed last session that requires classified companies to verify the ages of escorts.

Backpage has argued that because it's a national corporation, in-person verification would be impossible (instead, it just requires advertisers to check a box stating that they're 18 or older); in court, however, Backpage's attorney argued that in-person age verification would violate its free-speech rights. Cue the violins. The AP has more.

2. The Seattle Times reports on the overblown debate surrounding "living buildings"---buildings that generate their own water and energy---this time, from the perspective of environmentalists who think Seattle's so-called "Living Buildings" aren't green enough.

Neighborhood activists, meanwhile, maintain that the small height increases living buildings receive are a Trojan Horse for dense yuppie development. So why is the debate overblown on both sides? So far, just three buildings in the entire US have received official Living Building certification.

3. Has it come to this? The NYT reports that cyclists are resorting to lashing cameras onto their bikes or helmets to serve as "black boxes" for hit-and-runs. Footage from onboard cameras has started to play "an invaluable role in police investigations of a small number of hit-and-runs and other incidents around the country," and that number is expected to go up as the cost of the cameras---currently around $200---goes down.

4. MinPost , an online only-news site in Minnesota, has a story about the Republican US Congress failing to cut $72 million from the budget. Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum (along with Georgia Republican co-sponsor Rep. Jack Kingston) tried to kill the Pentagon's NASCAR sponsorship program, which costs $72 million, pointing out that the program failed to net a single military recruit. The demographic that watches NASCAR, Kingston said, is too old.

The majority party voted the bill down, though (it lost 216-202), arguing that the military needed to be in the public eye.