Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1854 - 1878 of 3749
Donald Trump was supposed to take over the Republican Party, but the question going forward will be whether the Republican Party takes over him. So far the early legislative agenda of Republicans after the Trump revolution is shaping up to be what you would have expected prior to the Trump revolution. It's a cookie-cutter GOP program that any Republican who ran for president in the past 40 years would feel comfortable signing, with its prospective centerpiece being another round of across-the-board tax cuts. This is why the Democratic approach...
Remember the lady who was burned by McDonald’s coffee when the cup tipped over and the coffee spilled on her lap? She sued the fast-food giant for injuries. To the surprise of many, she won a massive award, apparently because nobody had told her that fresh coffee might be hot. Now, some grieving parents are suing the computer company Apple. In 2014, this couple was hit from behind by a 20-year-old driver on a Texas highway. The man was traveling at approximately 65 miles an hour. He was allegedly chatting on FaceTime, the two-way visual c... Full story
As 2017 approaches, it is fascinating to look back at the vast changes in our lives over the last century and then imagine where we may be headed in the next 25 years. It is hard to picture that in the year 1900, more than 100,000 horses were in New York City. However, in 1917 the final horse-drawn carts, cabs and carriages left the city to be replaced by trucks, cars and buses. Henry Ford had perfected the “horseless carriage.” The Economist, a London-based magazine, highlighted the transformation in special report on the future of oil. Whi... Full story
In 2012 when Washington state was hotly debating legalizing recreational marijuana, I kept my thoughts to myself. I had never used pot in any form but realized that our national drug policies were not working. There was widespread disregard for the laws. Even Hollywood seemed to condone non-compliance. TV detective shows routinely had police officers tell suspects, “I’m not concerned about the drugs, I’m after something bigger.” We had to do something different. So, in the end, I reluctantly supported I-502, believing that it would spur th...
The Democrats have a simple explanation for Hillary Clinton's loss -- the Russians did it. The party that has had a decades-long soft spot toward Moscow and been reluctant to believe that the Kremlin might have aggressive intentions or, say, cheat on an arms-control agreement is in a frenzy over Russian hacking that supposedly denied Hillary the victory that was rightfully hers. John Podesta, the chairman of a Hillary campaign that considered accepting the results of an election part of American writ as of about two months ago, refused several...
There is a really good reason to support Senate confirmation of Rex Tillerson to be President-elect Donald Trump's secretary of state: Tony Perkins opposes him. Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council, otherwise known as the Bedroom Busybodies. He blasted out a statement condemning ExxonMobil CEO Tillerson as a person who "not only led the charge to open the Boy Scouts to gay troop leaders but whose company directly gives to Planned Parenthood." Tillerson was, in fact, active in the Boy Scouts and did lead the effort to open...
The Gazette has been around for a long time. It was first published the year after General Armstrong Custer was defeated at the Little Big Horn and the United States celebrated its centennial. In 1877, the founding year of the Gazette, the Nez Perce Indians under Chief Joseph tried to escape Idaho for Canada, being stopped in Montana in the dead of winter. That is when Joseph famously proclaimed to “fight no more forever.” The Gazette was well established when the Gunfight at the OK Corral took place and later when Geronimo surrendered. Uly...
This year’s good news is Washington apple production is the second best ever. The better news is shipments to Asian markets are returning to normal. Let me explain. In 2014, our state had its best apple crop in history, but prospects to deliver cases of apples across the ocean were dampened by a labor dispute at West Coast seaports. That dispute led to a prolonged slowdown (and eventual shutdown) in loading ships carrying thousands of agriculture and manufactured products. According to a report issued jointly by the National Association of M...
Just imagine that some generous benefactor gave you $5 million with the caveat that it had to be used to benefit the world we live in. How would you spend it? My first reaction would be world wide health care. There are research projects for aids, cancer and other crippling diseases that are hamstrung by lack of funds. Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders do wonderful work. I have run across some of these people in my travels and can assure you that they are dedicated to providing health care in parts of the world that don’t have w...
In the course of a couple of tweets, Donald Trump may have ended the image of the GOP as the party of corporate America. After striking a Carrier deal to preserve about 800 jobs, the president-elect slapped the Indiana company Rexnord on Twitter for "rather viciously firing" its workers and then went after Boeing for ripping off the public on a $3 billion Air Force One deal. Just like that, and in less than 280 characters, Trump had established more distance from big business than the GOP had in a generation. In his frenetic way, he is forcing...
Most people think of the mainstream media as the scum of the earth -- and most of us are -- but we do at least try to check out information before we go with a story. What a waste of time! Nobody trusts us anyway. Apparently, people prefer reports that don't bother with trivialities like facts. They choose to believe "fake news," so called because the stuff is not real. It's the figment of someone's imagination -- someone who is a looney-tune or has a profit motive or political agenda. In the warp-speed world of the internet, thousands upon... Full story
Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun asking for the truth about Santa Claus because her friends were telling her he did not exist. The famous response written by Francis Pharcellus Church was printed as an editorial Sept. 21, 1897. VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or chi...
Christmas is a difficult time for anyone grieving for lost loved ones. It is especially painful for America’s military families whose son, daughter, spouse or parent was killed while serving in uniform. Normally, the fallen are remembered on Memorial Day, but thanks to a Maine family and more than 800,000 donors and volunteers, more than a million wreaths will be laid on the tombstones of our fallen soldiers, sailors and airmen on Dec. 17. The panoramic view of Arlington National Cemetery’s rolling hills with its white grave markers per... Full story
It looks like the weather will bring the protests in North Dakota to a halt – at least until spring. I have been trying unsuccessfully to make some sense out of the controversy, but I haven’t heard anything that says the pipeline is not a good idea. The United States uses more oil than any other country in the world. To fill our requirements, we have had to import crude from countries that are not always friendly. Some are downright hostile. Before we began development of the North Dakota oil fields, we were dependent on foreign sources for...
Transmogrify Friends and fellow citizens who are loudly advocating for the sanctity of the second amendment, remember, there’s a lot more to the Constitution that needs defending these days. It’s like the Ten Commandments, you don’t get to just pick the ones you like and ditch the rest. Let’s all keep our eyes on the ball and be sure our great democracy doesn’t transmogrify into an oligarchy or a kleptocracy. Too many have sacrificed too much. Steve Swoope, Colfax...
One of the Obama administration's core competencies is suspending pipeline projects with no cause. It will leave office with another notch in its belt, now that the Army Corps of Engineers has acted to block a final piece of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The 1,200-mile pipeline is designed to move oil from North Dakota to Illinois and will have to await completion in a Trump administration with a more rational attitude toward pipelines specifically and fossil fuels generally. The story of the Dakota Access Pipeline will be familiar to anyone who...
Oh, the games the Donfather is playing. He does know how to take his pound of flesh. With Mitt Romney, for instance, he's extracting a ton. Donny the Avenger, who seems to be motivated by grudges, has been able to humiliate Mitt by making him grovel for the secretary of state job. And that was after he sent out his stalking horse Kellyanne Conway to say that making Mitt Romney his chief steward of foreign policy would be a "betrayal." Newt Gingrich, a stalking something else, ridiculed Romney for "sucking up." Their assignments from the boss se...
The Boeing company has been tweeted down by President-elect Donald Trump. He took exception to the company’s work on a new generation of planes designed to carry the president and others. These would be the new Air Force One class of planes. Two of them are planned. They will replace the aging aircraft that have been in service since George H.W. Bush was president. New ones are needed. These are not average aircraft. They are equipped with massive amounts of electronics, sophisticated communications, defensive devices and in-flight refueling c... Full story
There are dams that should come down and those that shouldn’t. Hopefully, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts its review of the 14 federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, that will become abundantly clear. Here is the difference. Demolishing the two dams on the Elwha River west of Port Angeles was a good thing. The dams were built in the early 1900’s to bring electricity to the Olympic Peninsula at a time when salmon and steelhead were plentiful in other Pacific Northwest rivers. Neither dam had fish ladders. On the Elwha, the i...
I have read several arguments against breaching our Snake River Dams. Some recently published here in the Gazette were excellent. They presented both the ecological and economic logic that would lead any rational person to conclude that the dams should stay. The problem we face, however, is that environmentalists are not rational. Anyone who has had any dealings with the EPA can testify that logic rarely gets in the way of their actions. My wife and I long dreamed of a waterfront getaway cabin. We finally saved enough for a down payment on our...
An open letter to Rep. Joseph Schmick Normally, a state representative would be celebrating the news; WA Parks just allocated 6 million dollars to make improvements right here in our own district. But I read in this paper last week that you’re going to try to stop that money from going through; you think it’s a mistake. You’re going to do your gosh darn level best to make sure Tekoa, Rosalia, Malden, Lind, Pine City, Ewan, Ritzville and all the other small towns you represent along the John Wayne Trail don’t get a chance to benefit from th... Full story
President Barack Obama won't explicitly say that Donald Trump is on the wrong side of history, but surely he believes it. The president basically thinks anyone who gets in his way is transgressing the larger forces of history with a capital "H." In 2008, he declared John McCain "on the wrong side of history right now" (the "right now" was a generous touch -- allowing for the possibility that McCain might get right with History at some future date). Obama has returned to this phrase and argument obsessively. It is deeply embedded in his, and the...
Wow, what a surprise the Electoral College was! Who knew that a candidate could win the race for the presidency even though he didn't get a majority of the actual national vote, like Donald Trump did? Somehow, that possibility evaded all the advisers buzzing around Hillary Clinton, who constantly and smugly assured everyone that they were the modern experts with the superior grasp of data, so worry not about Trump defeating Clinton. They are the same ones who are now bitterly complaining about the unfairness of the Electoral College. Never... Full story
It has been 75 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. With the signal, “Tora, Tora, Tora,” Japanese warplanes swooped down on the sleepy naval port. After the two waves of attackers finished their work, the U.S. Pacific fleet was devastated. Twenty ships were damaged or sunk. Hundreds of military planes were destroyed or damaged on the ground. More than 2,000 Americans were killed. That fateful attack galvanized the country. Up until December 7, the country resisted getting involved with the conflicts around the...
In Washington, an abundance of low cost, reliable hydropower spurs economic growth. It is a key reason why energy intensive industries locate here. Today, our nation has a profusion of carbon-based energy. Unlike a decade ago when we relied upon imported natural gas and crude oil, fracking technology put us on the path to be the world’s largest producer of processed petroleum. While fracked gas and oil are a boom to America’s economy, they are a big problem for traditional oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia. The Wall Street Jou...
