Obama’s Second Inaugural: Share your thoughts and predictions

Welcome to The Bellingham Herald's Politics Blog, where we cover politics and politically charged current events. Reporters John Stark and Ralph Schwartz 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.

Schwartz came to The Bellingham Herald as the new health, environment and social services reporter in December 2011, after five years at the Skagit Valley Herald. He took over the growth and transportation beat in August 2012. He cut his journalistic teeth in the newsroom of The Daily of the University of Washington in the late 1990s, when he was playing hooky from his graduate studies in atmospheric sciences. He was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area.

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