The curious case of Pravda Columbian censorship: disagree with them in the comment section, and you're likely gone.

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I got the idea for my earlier post on yet another John Laird screw up, when he falsely wrote that 18 was the age of consent for sex in Washington State.

Actually, this state has some incredibly bizarre laws concerning sexual consent, confusing to a large extent, senseless in any extent.

Briefly, Washington State did away with "statutory rape" and replaced it with the more apt descriptive phrase: "Rape of a child."

There are 3 degrees of rape of a child... and those degrees are not based on the act itself, but the age of the participants.

In short, the laws says a 14 year old can have sex with a 12 year old, but not an 11 year old. Likewise, anyone under the age of 12 can, based on this law, have sex with anyone from 24 months older(14) on down.

Unless, of course, you can find a married 12 year old. Then, whoever is married to the 12 year old, regardless of age... well, it's open season.

The law goes on to say, in effect, that a 17 year old may have sex with a 14 year old, but not a 13 year old... and finally, a 19 year old may have sex with a 15 year old, but not a 14 year old. Correspondingly, this means that age is not an element when one participant is 16 and the other is the same age or older.

Mr. Laird, having failed to spend a few minutes researching this, screwed up and misstated the law... and even though he screwed up and it was noted on his column website yesterday, instead of fixing his screw up, he just deleted the comments.

Anyone can check this out for themselves, as I did. But for someone with the title of "Editor" of anything to mearly put this garbage out; get shown that he is wrong, and then fail to correct his information, is the height of arrogance and stupidity... yet another symptom of this struggling newspaper.

That the newspaper actually engages in, or allows the engagement in of this type of underhanded "journalism" is inexcusable. With this type of miserable failure going on, how can anyone be remotely interested in actually paying money for this type of product?

But this just goes to the underlying problem: whenever anyone disagrees with this paper, they run the risk of having their disagreement ignored, stripped, belittled, insulted and/or deleted.

Not all of those with columns engage in the practice. Right now, for example, Lou Brancaccio is being challenged on his column where he has been reminded, once again, of the Pravda Columbian's violation of any pretense of fairness over their efforts to brainwash this community into actually thinking anyone wants the massive waste of money known as the I-5 Bridge Replacement.

Unlike Mr. Laird, who deals with objections to his garbage by simply removing them, Mr. Brancaccio at least appears to allow those objections to remain, no matter how badly he mishandles them, at least for now.

Unfortunately, any good will accomplished by that gesture is shattered by the misfeasance of his editorial page editor.

And that's a shame. Because as this paper continues to struggle, it needs all the community good will it can possibly get. And being in the tank for only one political party, as well as getting stupid over a massively expensive, unwanted and unneeded bridge replacement with light rail does nothing to achieve that.