Welcome to The Bellingham Herald's Politics Blog, where we cover politics and politically charged current events. Reporters John Stark and Jared Paben write for the blog.

Stark joined The Bellingham Herald in 1981, left to pursue parenting and teaching in 1989, and returned in 2000. He has a New Jersey birth certificate.

Paben has been a reporter for The Bellingham Herald since fall 2006, covering growth, transportation and other topics. He also writes for The BellinghamHerald's Traffic Talk blog. Before coming here, he worked for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., and various Oregon newspapers. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Oregon in 2006. He grew up in the town of Creswell, Ore., which is just south of Eugene, Ore., along Interstate 5.

We appreciate your participation on the blog. We encourage expressions of opinion, rebuttals and criticism. To ensure everybody is comfortable participating and commenting on posts, we ask that readers refrain from posting personal attacks, and from bantering back and forth with one another, off-topic. We also strongly encourage people to use their real names when posting comments, just as we do.

We provide no guarantee of anonymity. Public officials and political candidates should not use this forum to promote themselves or attack political opponents anonymously.

Thanks for reading!

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