On Friday night, he told KING5 he's looking at it:

Republican Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert tells KING 5 News he may consider running for Governor.

Republicans expect Attorney General Rob McKenna will jump into the race, but Reichert says he's keeping all his options open too.

[...]

Reichert said he's considering both a run at the Senate, taking on Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell, but also the Governor's position back here in Washington state.

"It's pretty much the same answer, the senate race is out there, the Governor's race is out there, my race, is already in process," said Rep. Reichert.

Reichert says just because some Republicans have thrown support behind McKenna, that's not a reason to rule out his options.

"I've had calls, I've said, 'Look, I know Rob's the guy, and I think Rob would be an outstanding candidate,'" he said. "But he is so bright and so well-liked, I think he has a great chance of winning. But, no one knows."

My quick take: Were Reichert and McKenna to both run for the same office, it would turn into an intra-party fight in which I'm not sure I could take sides. I'm a big fan of both of them, for entirely different reasons....

There's been a lot of chatter recently about how various economic indicators should have President Obama running scared as he commences the 2012 re-election campaign. Unemployment remains higher than is generally viewed as tolerable. The US is carrying a lot of debt, and S&P revised its outlook amid concerns that political gridlock will prevent our debt problem from being brought under control. The wage stagnation issue that some commentators focus on heavily appears persistent. Gas prices are up again, at a level that has many drivers outraged.

But here are another two datapoints that I think should have all people in elected office, and not just President Obama, concerned: 1) Major food brands are raising their prices, meaning that buying the same stuff with the same crappy paycheck is going to cost average Americans more (note that this is also true of airlines, and rising food prices aren't really news in and of themselves), and 2) home prices seem to be experiencing a double-dip, something that in at least some cases is probably going to impact people's ability to borrow against their house value to fund costs associated with a more expensive, but not at all more luxurious, lifestyle. ...

That's the title of this piece from WIRED. Definitely worth a read:

In the months after the accident, Soviet authorities undertook drastic measures to deal with the catastrophe. Almost 1,000 acres of the Red Forest had perished, and nearly 4 square miles of topsoil around the sarcophagus was scraped away and buried as radioactive waste. Of the 250 settlements and villages in the zone that were evacuated, the most radioactive were bulldozed in their entirety and interred. Contaminated livestock were slaughtered, and abandoned pet dogs were shot by teams of local hunters. By the time the process of liquidation was finished, the land surrounding the reactor had been transformed into a sterile moonscape, a nightmarish post-nuclear wasteland flattened by machinery and sprayed with chemicals designed to trap radioactive particles close to the ground.

Since then, nature has slowly crept in. Once an area of heavy industry and collectivized agriculture, the zone is now nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside. The forest has reclaimed long-abandoned villages and farmland; roads and buildings are being swallowed up by thickets of trees and shrubs. The natural process of radioactive decay has already removed some toxic particles from the environment. Those isotopes with short half-lives have already disappeared. Some longer-lived isotopes gradually leached into the soil and have been dispersed by wind, birds, and insects....