Friday 5: A taste of the 300+ on-demand CLEs on sale now
Rejoice, for summer has returned to the Pacific Northwest! Breathe deeply as the scent of charring meats fills the air, dive into waters that no longer induce hypothermia, and welcome the return of the CLE Annual Summer Sale. Read more 
Familial DNA Searching: Troubling Civil Liberties Challenges
The technique of familial DNA searching has been in the news lately for having resulted in the arrest of a suspected serial killer in California, as well as an arrest in a recent Washington homicide case, but the use of such techniques raises significant civil liberties concerns. In both cases, police uploaded crime scene data to the website GEDmatch, which allows users to upload their genetic profiles—generated via other services—to find relatives and ancestries by searching for “partial” DNA matches. That technique identified a number of individuals related to the suspects. The suspects were then surveilled and their “abandoned” DNA collected and matched to the crime scene DNA, resulting in the arrests.
A number of troubling civil liberties challenges arise from this scenario. Read more
Legislative Update
It’s been a busy first half of the 2018 Washington legislative session! The big news out of Olympia: lawmakers resolved the contentious water rights issue that stalled the budget for months, allowing Gov. Jay Inslee to sign a $4.2 billion capital budget that pays for construction projects across the state.
New Law Opens Dental Practice Ownership to Those Not Licensed to Practice
Dental support organizations are typically not owned by dentists, so historically they use creative methods to operate in Washington. Until recently, state law required any entity providing dental services to be owned and controlled by licensed dentists. A new law opens that door, while placing clear restrictions and patient protections.
Effective July 23, 2017, the new law resolves many long-running conflicts between licensed dentists and dental support organizations and brings clarity to a number of issues. Read more
Is “Diverse” Really What You Mean?
Language matters—I mean really, really matters. The words we choose can make a huge difference to the overall meaning of something we are communicating. Even little connotations and implications can have a big impact on the meaning. For example, if I were to write the sentences, “His actions were youthful,” and, “His actions were childish,” you would see that the last words in each sentence have the same definition (denotative meaning) but very different implications (connotative meaning). Denotatively they both mean seeming young or having qualities associated with a child, but connotatively, the former suggests spry and lively (positive connotations) while the latter suggests naiveté or immaturity (negative connotations). Read more
