Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1482 - 1506 of 3750
James Comey did it, naturally, for the children. Why does anyone in Washington take advantage of the most opportune moment to make a mint off publishing a tell-all book? It's never for the profits or the sheer satisfaction of sticking it to your enemies and putting yourself in the best possible light. No, there's always some ostensible higher cause. For the former FBI director, it's demonstrating, through his own sterling example, what ethical leadership is, "especially to young people." That the nation's youth will be riveted to their TV...
In Washington politics, rarely does anybody fully mean what he or she says. But few who know Paul Ryan doubt that he's sincere when he explains that he's abandoning his all-consuming job as House Speaker to spend much more time with his wife, Janna, and their three kids. Believe it when he says he's not running for re-election to Congress because he's longing to be more than a "Saturday dad." So, he'll be going home to Janesville, Wisconsin, as a private citizen next year. However, another reality in Washington is that there usually is more to...
Idaho has a slogan to encourage highway cleanliness: Idaho is too great to litter. It may be time for Whitman County to start up its own campaign because the picture-perfect Palouse isn't so pretty when its decorated in empty beer cans and broken bottles. Sunday was Earth Day. Thirty-five volunteers from Endicott spent three hours cleaning up along the roadside on the seven-mile stretch between Endicott and Winona. Many of the volunteers were amazed at the number of trash bags needed for this one section of lightly-used county road. The...
I can’t feel sorry for Stormy Daniels. This saga shows American politics at its worst. For those who haven’t followed the scandal in detail, let me recap the sequence of events as I understand them. In 2006, a sleazy British tabloid claimed a professional bad girl had a one-night stand with a rich American tycoon. The bad girl categorically denied the whole thing. Then, ten years later the tycoon decides to run for president. The bad girl threatens to publicly expose the affair that she earlier denied unless she is paid a whole bunch of mon...
President Trump campaigned on cutting taxes, streamlining regulations and improving infrastructure. He also vowed to renegotiate our trade agreements calling the North American Free Trade Agreement “the worst deal ever made.” On his first day in office, he signed an executive order aimed at reducing regulations and controlling regulatory costs. However, revamping our vast web of federal rules is much easier said than done. It is even more difficult when state and local rules are considered. The cost of regulations is a key American com...
Slipped away When I read Richard Stanton’s rather hate-filled letter to the editor last week, I found myself agreeing with one of his points. Adultery is an egregious and deplorable behavior. But I seem to recall just in my lifetime a lot of politicians that have been alleged to have engaged in that conduct. Let me see … JFK, RFK, LBJ, Bush 41, Bill Clinton, Bush 43, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy ... and the list goes on ad-nauseam. Maybe it would be easier to make a list of politicians who have not had allegations of infidelity th...
Once again, Mark Zuckerberg is sorry. The founder of Facebook, who has apologized for privacy breaches throughout much of his company's existence, is back at it, on a much larger stage than ever before. The proximate cause is the Cambridge Analytica controversy. In violation of Facebook's rules, the Trump-linked political consultancy schemed to get access to the data of 87 million users. This has made Facebook a scapegoat for President Donald Trump's victory on par with the Russians and James Comey (at least before the FBI director got fired...
In spite of all the controversy about Scott Pruitt's cushy D.C. condo, it's entirely appropriate that he was getting a sweetheart deal on a place to sleep. After all, for his entire political career, he's been in bed with the special business interests who resist any and all government efforts to protect against their ravaging of the environment. In Oklahoma, as a state senator, then attorney general, and now the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Pruitt has been a stalwart opponent of any regulation that...
In many cases, Americans are struggling to understand what is happening in the country. Most confounding is the role of the various departments and agencies in the functioning of government. Agencies seem at odds, departments seem over-reaching and political appointees seem independent. On top of this, Congress is unable to conduct important business and is becoming more divided along party lines. The president is at odds with both elected and appointed leaders. Democracy is neither pretty nor the most efficient. It can be messy. It can get...
I finished my taxes a few weeks ahead of the deadline. Yippee!!! Now I can worry about something else. When I talk to my friends, I find I am one of the few who prepares their own tax returns. Most are afraid to make a mistake or decide not to spend the time. The IRS publishes estimates of the time required to prepare each form. They are pretty accurate. By the time I read the instructions, sorted my files into the appropriate piles, and completed the forms, I had invested more than three full days. I recall a big IRS push a few tax seasons...
Any trade war between the United States and China is worrisome, but if it escalated and tariffs are imposed, it will hit Washington particularly hard. Avoiding that possibility should be our primary goal. Our state is our nation’s third largest exporter with more than half of the containers leaving the Puget Sound heading to China. The Port of Seattle estimated that China trade alone accounted for $18 billion last year and 40 percent of our state’s jobs are now tied to trade. President Trump has proposed tariffs as a bargaining chip to get a b...
“Traitor” Trump One of many things I can't understand about the supporters of "Treasonous" Trump is the extreme hypocrisy of otherwise honorable, God fearing people. Multiple evangelistic and other Christian leaders have publicly given "Adulterous" Trump a "mulligan" on his many violations of the Ten Commandments -- What?? A mulligan like in a golf game!! What happened to morals? This son-of-a-gun screwed around on his third wife with at least two other women while his wife was taking care of their newborn child! Also, it is very well kno...
President Donald Trump gets results. His attacks on Amazon have tanked the company's stock. It's hard to think of a more pointlessly destructive act of presidential jawboning in our history. The online retailer is a jewel of our market economy that has delivered more choice and convenience at a lower cost. The backdrop for Trump's animosity is that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which, like much of the major media, is unrelentingly hostile to the president. The bias of the Post is nothing new, nor should it be taken out on the...
Does anybody know or care where Laura Ingraham is "vacationing"? Ingraham, who has been a mouthpiece for right-wing nastiness for decades, recently had gravitated to a perch at Fox News (where else?) to do the venomous schtick that has brought her fame and fortune. But then she crossed the teeny-bopper. Not just any teeny-bopper. This is David Hogg, the extremely telegenic Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior and survivor of the shooting massacre there on Valentine's Day. He's a founder of the Never Again MSD movement and a leader of...
The last presidential election was targeted by Russia and others. The alleged purpose was to sway the results towards Donald Trump. Allegations claim that hackers gained access to 21 state voting systems, although reportedly no votes were changed in those systems. These breaches were the most direct attack on the election process. Yet, during the campaign, other attacks occurred. False news, fake endorsements and the like were disseminated to confuse and influence votes in favor of Trump. Some call the efforts “meddling.” Others call them dir...
I have followed Mark Rypien’s denunciation of the NFL, and football in general, as the cause of his mental illness. I have no doubt that his condition is genuine, and there may be some merit to his claims; the courts think so anyway. His lawsuit against the NFL resulted in a $765 million judgment and initiated a strict concussion protocol. His cause is supported by Dr. Omalu, author of the book “Concussion.” Dr. Omalu warns parents against allowing children to play any contact sport. He would have us believe that most football players suffe...
Rewording Frank Watson (Stop the Violence - March 29, 2018,) oh you are the good company man, as exemplified by your implied rewording of the firearms industry slogan, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" into, "Guns don't kill people, frivolous lawsuits kill people." However, tort reform will not stop the violence. Mark Olson, Seattle Unacceptable I have never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, most of the people that know me would probably say “Yeah he’s a good guy, a little slow sometimes but he means well.” I don’t...
All you needed to know about student activist David Hogg's speech at the "March for Our Lives" in Washington, D.C., was that he affixed a price tag on the microphone to symbolize how much National Rifle Association money Sen. Marco Rubio took for the lives of students in Florida. The stunt wasn't out of place. Indeed, it perfectly encapsulated the braying spirit of the student gun-control advocacy in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. These young activists are making our public debate even more poisonous and less civil, and are...
YYYY Nice person that left wonderful gifts on porch on Southview on Easter Sunday!! YYYY The wonderful Rosauers Easter Egg Hunt #!*! Colfax school & city – not what they were 20 years ago....
There are arguments over the number of those who participated in the March for Our Lives, as there always are disputes over crowd size at these mass demonstrations. Suffice it to say, a bunch of people took part. In Washington, the spat is over just how many hundred thousands flooded the nation's capital, to say nothing of those who turned out in hundreds of cities and towns throughout the United States and around the world. The organizers -- rank amateur teenagers who rose up from Parkland, Fla., after the massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas...
Years ago on the southern California coast, certain beaches were often covered with tar. It was just part of going to the beach. One thing that had to be included with the beach balls, towels and plastic shovels and buckets was a can of turpentine. That was to clean off the tar before going home. Also Catalina Island, famously 26 miles off the coast (at least according to the song) was often obscured by a dirty brown band of pollution that blew over the channel from Los Angeles. In 1957, the International Geophysical Year marked greenhouse...
Wondering Wowie! President Draft Dodger Trump sure does act guilty of something. I wonder why? Richard Stanton, Colfax...
President Donald Trump's pick for CIA director is about to experience a good Borking. No one doubts her professionalism, and she's been endorsed by Obama intelligence officials. Yet Gina Haspel's long career at the agency, including extensive work undercover in the field, is getting blotted out by her reported involvement in the CIA's black-site interrogation program, which has become a warrant to say anything about her. Her critics assert she should be in jail, and The New York Times editorial page wrote about her nomination under the...
Most of the 2.5 million annual Alamo visitors focus on the epic 1836 battle in which a small band of brave Texans was eventually overrun by the Mexican army. Folk heroes like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis were among the Texans killed while fighting for independence from Mexico. However, the Alamo is more than a small Spanish-style church depicted on tourism brochures which barely withstood a 13-day pummeling from Mexican cannons. It is a large complex built nearly a century before the seize where irrigated agriculture was...
The death of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking brings to mind Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. How weird is that? But bear with me. Hawking credibly speculated about a parallel universe on the other side of a black hole. What if, in that alternative existence, Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election? How, in that black hole that is U.S. politics, would she be doing as president? In a word, badly. She wouldn't be the disgrace that Donald Trump is -- there's no way anyone can match his bigotry, hateful appeals to our worst instincts...
