Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1956 - 1980 of 3750
There's an interesting debate going on among some liberals, some "Never Trump" holdouts and even some other conservatives. It is a really fundamental question: Can they be personal friends with supporters of Donald Trump? They have decided that Trump stands for bigotry, misogyny and cruelty toward the handicapped – and, in fact, anyone who dares criticize him, even the parents of a Muslim soldier who died defending this country. They've concluded that his backers clearly must share those outlooks, which they abhor, or at least find them a...
This weekend, I had my first opportunity to travel to Steptoe Butte for some sightseeing. I have lived in Whitman County since 2008, but I had never made the trip. The sightseeing did not disappoint, and I could see why this is a popular spot for travelers, photographers, sightseers and others. It is incredible there! I am already looking forward to my next trip. The reason I went to Steptoe Butte with my friends is because it is currently one of my only recreational options for getting outside. I have a fractured ankle, and I am unable to...
The Great Depression was very hard on most Americans. People lost their savings, jobs and homes. Often families were separated because there simply were too many mouths to feed even when moms, dads and kids pooled their meager earnings from odd jobs. Businesses and factories closed and our government struggled to respond. Soup kitchens fed people waiting in long unemployment lines. It is against this setting that fascist Germany hosted the summer Olympics in 1936. It was an extravaganza that was unimaginable for Olympians traveling to Berlin...
Donald Trump got sound advice the other day. At a rally at Davenport, Iowa, he told the crowd that a prominent supporter had called and urged him not to sweat all the attacks at the Democratic National Convention. "Don't hit down," the supporter urged, according to Trump. "You have one person to beat. It's Hillary Rodham Clinton." By Trump's account, he conceded the good sense of this, although he noted how he always prefers hitting back – "it makes me feel good." If so, he must have enjoyed his weekend. He spent it attacking not just Khizr Kha...
To be honest, I never realized that Mike Pence had such a wild sense of humor. I pegged him as more the "earnest" extremist, not such a kidder. Well, the laugh's on me. Surely Pence was joking when he complained to conservative radio interviewer Hugh Hewitt about "name-calling." The GOP vice-presidential nominee chastised President Barack Obama for using the term "homegrown demagogues" in his convention speech: "I don't think name-calling has any place in public life, and I thought that was unfortunate that the president of the United States...
The region has been ravaged by serious wildfires. The Snake River Fire torched some 11,500 acres. The Palouse Falls Fire and the Fletcher Road Fire near Lyons Ferry burned thousands more. All these are out now. The fires were fought with resources from a variety of agencies. Rain Sunday and Tuesday finished off some of the hot spots. Our area is a tinder box. It is dry and has been hot. The Snake River Fire would have been serious in any event, but high winds exacerbated its danger and compounded the difficulty of fighting it. This fire...
Weeds, weeds, weeds As I drive north to Rosalia or south to Colfax, I see many different weeds growing along the edge of Highway 195. I would think the DOT would at least make an attempt to control some of the weeds, such as cat tails, vetch and Canadian thistle. However, I see no control. Good chemicals are easy to obtain. All that would be needed is some labor and some eyes to see the problem. Farmers around Cashup control weeds very well. They spend many dollars and many hours of labor to control any weeds. I would think the DOT could learn...
America must have a thoughtful and comprehensive national energy policy which focuses on supplies that are environmentally friendly, abundant and affordable. Our strategy needs to include all energy sources. It must have balance and we need to have the patience, persistence and wisdom to implement it. It should encourage innovation. Energy is our nation’s lifeline. As our technology improves and our population grows, our dependence on electricity and transportation fuels increases. An “All-of-the-Above Energy Policy” would include wind, solar,...
Hillary Clinton frequently will acknowledge that she's not really the kind of campaigner who gets the adrenaline pumping. Instead, her pitch uses words like "steady," "experienced" and "competent," as compared with that bigoted, simple-minded, fraudulent madman on the other side. The problem is that the bigoted, simple-minded, fraudulent madman she describes has already rolled over all the steady, experienced, competent Republican operatives and candidates. Donald Trump is the party's nominee to be president of the United States. Hillary's spie...
If only we could get to know the real Hillary Clinton. Unveiling the Hillary we supposedly don't know has been the perpetual, elusive goal of Clinton's handlers for decades, with the Democratic convention in Philadelphia the latest stab at it. Hillary has made more reintroductions than should be allowed for a person who has never gone away. Political writer Jonathan Rauch has a 14-year rule that posits no one is elected president more than 14 years after winning election as a governor or senator (the traditional jumping-off points for the...
Saturday, Luke Aikins, 42, stuntman, trainer and skydiver with nearly 20,000 jumps, wanted to find his limits. So, naturally, he jumped from a plane flying at 25,000 feet. He jumped without a parachute or wing suit. The idea was to then land, if that is the word, in a net. Other jumpers went with him for a while until they had to pop their chutes. One took Aikins’ oxygen mask when he reached an altitude at which he could breathe on his own. Aikins went the rest of the way alone. Then, as he plummeted closer and closer to earth, he had to try t...
Supports Pakootas For me, this 2016 primary election raises many questions and challenges with very few answers. Also, the fact that the two individuals who receive the most votes for each position, regardless of elected party affiliation, will advance to the fall election, adds to the problem. That said, I want to express my personal choice in one race – selecting a candidate to replace Cathy McMorris Rodgers to represent us in the U. S. House of Representatives. That person is Joe Pakootas. I first learned about Joe Pakootas when he ran a...
Between now and November, you will hear a lot about “How to Make America Great Again!” Much of our country’s greatness is because of our “entrepreneurial spirit.” It is our unique trait which makes us the envy of the world. America has been blessed with industrious leaders who are optimistic, forward looking and passionate. They are tireless men and women who take calculated risks and pull themselves together after failure. They have the drive to get things done no matter what the circumstances. Henry J. Kaiser, who dropped out of school at age...
In the past two weeks, the "war on police" has gone from a metaphor to a reality, with eight officers killed in targeted attacks in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The country hasn't seen anything like it since the early 1970s, when a lunatic fringe of the left undertook a violent campaign against law enforcement. Today's spate of anti-police violence isn't remotely as organizationally or ideologically coherent, but it is much more lethal. Vanity Fair writer Bryan Burrough recounts the history in his exceptional book "Days of Rage." As a radical...
We were on vacation. Nice is a favorite destination of ours. That night, we decided to watch the Bastille Day fireworks from our rental-apartment balcony, overlooking the beautiful Mediterranean. It's a good thing we did. As the last Roman candles sputtered and the thousands of spectators started to depart, a truck driven by a madman ran some flimsy barricades, jumped onto the crowded walkway just below our window and slammed into the pedestrians. Witnesses say he deliberately ran down men, women, children. My wife and I had turned away and...
The Republican convention is over, and the Democratic convention will end today. The two conventions were very different in tone and message. They have one thing in common, however: Neither party is totally unified behind its candidate for president. Major Republican leaders were absent from Donald Trump’s coronation. Many party leaders and past standard bearers did not attend. Some who did grudgingly gave their endorsements after withholding them for some time. As for the Democrats, the unsuccessful campaign of Bernie Sanders has left many d...
Over the last 35 years our family has vacationed at the same place on the beach. While the buildings have been refurbished, the complex remains largely unchanged. However, our entertainment has changed a lot. We still swim, jump the waves and build sandcastles, but our board games, puzzles and playing cards have been replaced with kids’ electronic tablets, smart phones and movies downloaded from the internet. We still take lots of pictures, but rather than taking them to film processing centers, we use cellphone cameras to instantly text and p...
Colfax Restrooms One of our great joys is to drive around the Palouse and sometimes beyond. One of the things that we discovered is that a number of the small communities that we visited had “rest areas.” Most of the time these areas were concentered right in the middle of town, for example, Tekoa and Palouse. In an opposite direction we stopped in the downtowns of Pomeroy and Sisters, Ore. all of these areas had grass, a community bulletin board of what’s happening, picnic tables and a trash can and, of course restrooms that were clean, well m...
President Barack Obama is a lawyer, not a statistician, and it shows. After the controversial officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Obama unloosed a series of statistics in his remarks in Warsaw, Poland, to show "racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system" -- in other words, racial bias by police, prosecutors and judges. Obama related numbers about disparate rates of police shootings, arrests and searches, among other things, without mentioning the single most important factor to...
Yes, there are several months before Election Day, and so many surprises that could upend things between now and then, but the way things look now, there is one safe observation about Hillary Clinton's huge credibility problem: It is not going away. Yes, her people will argue that after the decision to not indict, further discussion of her email blunders and evasions are "old news." Well, the old news is cumulative, and even though she escaped, perhaps barely, being formally charged with a crime, FBI Director James Comey outlined a scathing...
The police in America are under attack. Three were killed last weekend in Baton Rouge. Three others were wounded. Just before this, five were killed in Dallas with nine other police and two bystanders wounded. Both attacks were pre-meditated ambushes. Beyond these physical attacks, the nation’s law enforcement is also under fire for what many think are questionable deaths of citizens by police. Two recent deaths at the hands of police in Falcon Heights, Minn., and, again, Baton Rouge have sparked outrage and protests. Police are accused of t...
Since the construction of Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams, Washington has enjoyed an abundance of low cost, reliable hydropower. It has been one key competitive advantage for energy intensive industries and now it is vital to our state burgeoning “clean tech industries.” Hydropower, along with nuclear, solar and wind, produces no greenhouse gases; however, solar and wind only generate electricity intermittently. Their production must be augmented by reliable sources which include those using natural gas. Washington’s Dept. of Commerce estim...
Endorses Wilson Dave Wilson has proven to us many times that he is dedicated and is working hard daily. He talks to people daily, goes to many events to meet people and hands out brochures. Dave as an independent believes in investing in our country's future, through education, infrastructure and research as well as the development of clean energy resources that protect our environment. Dave knows that the government does have a role to play in building a strong economy and guarding its citizens against discriminatory practices or the abuses...
Two hundred and forty years before Brexit, there was Amexit, also known as the American Revolution. In terms of historical consequence, the Brexit vote and the American Revolution don't occupy the same universes, but they are connected by a belief in popular sovereignty and a refusal to be governed by a remote authority with only an attenuated mechanism -- if that -- for representation. In Brexit, the British people decided that their Parliament should trump the governing machinery of the EU, and in our Revolution, we decided that our Colonial...
Before I'm finished with this commentary, I will have incensed nearly everyone. It's about guns. So let the fury begin: If I had my way, private ownership would be eliminated -- no pistols, no rifles, certainly no assault weapons, except in the hands of the military and law enforcement. End of story. Right now, the readers who adore their instruments of death are already seething and preparing their hateful comments and personal threats. But let's not leave out antagonizing those who advocate controls on the nation's private arsenal. Their...
