Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 2072 - 2096 of 3750
This shouldn't be necessary, but apparently Republicans need a little constitutional review. So for Mitch McConnell and the rest of the partisans, let's turn to Article 2, Section 2, which is about the responsibilities of the president. Can all of us see it there, the part that reads "he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States"? Does everyone notice it says "shall," that it's not...
The current campaign for president is setting the tone for future political discourse. This campaign season has seen unprecedented personal attacks, dirty tricks and vulgar language. Truth and civility are notably absent. No candidate seems “presidential,” and both parties are guilty of the abuses. All this does not bode well for the future. One of the most disturbing comments to come out of the campaigning was, not surprisingly, from Donald Trump. It has not been widely reported. Put aside his comments about Hispanics or Muslims or the oth...
Tribute to an old friend The other day as I was walking down the hall at the high school, I went by one of the opened doors to the gym and I noticed my old friend, Scooter Brannon, quietly seated on the bleachers. I looked at this as an opportunity to say hi and ask of his health. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries and talked of the girls’ success on the basketball court. While sitting there and sharing I looked up to see that the whole girls’ basketball team had formed a tight semicircle around us and Carmen Gfeller had seated herself nex...
In 1962, songwriter Bob Dylan composed "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind." It was a Vietnam War protest song suggesting the ambiguous answer to ending war and living in peace and harmony was “blowin’ in the wind”...somewhere. Today, wind power is an important part of our nation’s electricity generating system and it will be essential in the decades ahead. The question is how much of it can we reasonably produce to meet our nation’s growing electrical demands? While people support wind power they aren’t hip about seeing thousands of...
In the blink of an eye, we've gone from opening combat jobs to women to Republican presidential candidates endorsing registering women for a draft. Hide your daughters -- our deluded and cowardly political elites are a clear and present danger to common sense. A proposal from the chief of staff of the Army and the commandant of the Marine Corps to require that women register with Selective Service seemed at first like an effort to highlight the absurd endpoint of the rush to women in combat, but top Republicans duly saluted and fell in line....
Hillary Clinton can duke it out when she needs to. Or duchess it out. That was on display during the recent Democratic debate when she confronted Bernie Sanders' persistent charges that she is tainted by her financial ties to Wall Street and the political "establishment." His accusation, she spit out, was "a very artful smear." "Smear" is one of the most brutal pejoratives in the campaign game. With Martin O'Malley no longer cluttering the stage, it was just Bernie and Hillary, mano a womano. And she played the female card: "Sen. Sanders is...
He's just a socialist offering free stuff. Only a few years ago, the charge would have worked. But in 2016, what used to be the forlorn lament of the purest liberal is now enough to build a legitimate presidential campaign on. The issue, as it's named, is “income inequality.” It's misleading though, because most of Bernie Sanders' supporters don't even have a problem with it. The vast majority of Americans are all for successful, accomplished people getting rich. But they do have a problem if...
In January, the American Association of Railroads or AAR published its first-ever state of the railroads annual report focusing on the industry’s economic value, innovations and emphasis on safety. The nation’s railroads have been around for about 180 years and maintain 180,000 miles of track. Trains move over 51 million tons of freight each day which is about 40percent of the nation’s freight. Rail has been a vital transportation link in Pacific Northwest since 1883. That year President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in we...
Colfax Amazing Val Gregory, unified executive director working for several different organizations, is the most extraordinary person that I have ever met. She is doing for this community more than anyone has done before. Her talents go in every direction. Val’s ability to research and formulate ideas and bring to fruition ways to put Colfax in the spotlight is absolutely amazing. She has energized others to be a part of her endeavors. I am sure that Val is not paid enough to compensate her for her time and efforts. She is supposed to be part t...
Who can possibly govern a country where the name "United States" is an illusion? There is little united about us, not when it comes to politics. In both parties, we have candidate lineups that make the WWE look authentic by comparison, except that the wrestlers are not as weird as the candidates. How else should we describe the bizarros in that recent tag-team match, otherwise known as the Republican debate? Actually, the star of that circus was the clown who didn't show up: Donald Trump, the modern reincarnation of P.T. Barnum. What a...
We live in the age of working-class discontent, which, if it wasn't obvious before, has been made plain by the passions roiling 2016 presidential politics. The media's preferred description of the average Republican voter has often been "the angry white male." This was crudely simplistic and meant to be pejorative. If the press wants to update the descriptor, it should refer to "the despairing white male." Or more accurately, the despairing white working class. White working-class life in America has been in a slow-motion disintegration for dec...
Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, is the first community to vote in the state’s primary election. The registered voters arrive before midnight, so they are ready to cast their ballots at the first tick of election day. The community has had a 100 percent voter turnout for decades. This year, all nine Dixville Notch voters cast their votes. Bernie Sanders won on the Democratic side. John Kasich won on the Republican side. It’s a quaint tradition. Not so quaint a tradition is the inordinate effort of presidential candidates to win in two non...
The seemingly endless stream of Obama Administration rules to circumvent Congress and states is driving people away from finding practical solutions to problems and into courtrooms filled with highly-paid attorneys waging a “paperwork” war. Case in point: EPA and Army Corps issued long-awaited rules in March 2014 seeking to clarify Clean Water Act regulatory jurisdiction over additional bodies of water, particularly those that are seasonal or dependent on rain and wetlands near streams. Opponents of the rules, which range from agriculture to sm...
Pressure continues January 22 the ballots for this spring’s Colfax School District replacement special levy election were mailed out. The current levy expires at the end of 2016. The importance of this special levy election which covers years 2017 and 2018 cannot be overstated with regards to the continuing excellent education of our community’s young people. The Washington State Legislature continues to shirk their constitutional responsibility and not fund basic education, even while receiving a $100,000 per day fine by the Washington Sta...
At the moment, the Republican establishment is relevant to the presidential-nomination battle only as an epithet. The fight for the Republican nomination isn't so much a vicious brawl between the grass roots and the establishment as it is a bitter struggle between traditional conservatism and populism that few could have foreseen. Conservatism has always had a populist element, encapsulated by the oft-quoted William F. Buckley Jr. line that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard...
Just to set the tone, I despise winter. This is being written as I sit in my Washington house looking through the window at 2 feet or so of snow, snarling at anyone who says it's a pretty winterscape. There is no such thing. But being imprisoned does give one time to think First of all, I have some sympathy for the municipal officials here who rarely get snow removal right. It's not like we're in an uninhabitable location, like Canada, Chicago or Cleveland, where frigid climate is routine. Those locations can maintain huge inventories of heavy...
The Iowa caucuses are over. Turnout was heavy, and emotions were high. The five front runners all claimed victories of sorts. The three Republicans getting the most delegate votes were Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. Each had reasons for their claims that this was just the start of future success. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton finished in a virtual tie, although Clinton claimed the victory. Both claimed this was just the start of their future successes. Iowa is an anomaly as compared the most other states. A win here does not...
In 2001, Boeing shocked state and local leaders announcing it was relocating its headquarters to Chicago. Suddenly, the company with its deep roots in our Puget Sound region was housed on the shores of Lake Michigan. That move coupled with Boeing’s world-wide search for sites to build its next generation of commercial airplanes prompted then Gov. Gary Locke (D) to form a competitiveness council. Its mission was to recommend ways to improve our state’s competitiveness primarily so Boeing’s production and jobs would remain here. Some legis...
Hallmark I want to encourage a “yes” vote on the school district levy. Our levy committee has planned with the administration and staff a reasonable and responsible budget supplement that is necessary to maintain our community as a desirable place to raise a family. Consistent levy support makes it possible to extend the curriculum by providing richer and deeper courses, allows experiences in band and choir that have made these experiences special, provides leadership opportunities in ASB, FFA and FBLA, and allows for classroom needs that don’t...
The Obama administration was right when it insisted that the capture and release of 10 American sailors by Iran showed the benefits of a cooperative relationship with Tehran. The crux of the arrangement is simple: The Iranians agree to humiliate us (and pursue their long war against the United States and their hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East), and we agree not to care. It is, as Secretary of State John Kerry says, diplomacy at its best. What Vice President Joe Biden called "standard nautical practice" involved the Iranians making our...
In the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Of course, he's moved on from Washington power broker to broken mayor of Chicago, where he's becoming a walking, talking crisis himself. He's fighting for his survival in the midst of a police controversy that even by Chicago standards has become a scandal. The difference between the murderous cop abuse this time and that of generations past is the video that makes it impossible to sweep under the rug, like they've always done. But still, the advice to...
A four-month-old child died April 5. He rolled off his bed and suffocated on a plastic bag. The father was sentenced Friday to 27 months for second degree manslaughter. The apartment where the child, his parents and two other siblings lived was reportedly in total disarray, filthy and loaded with dangers for the children. The mother was not charged with any culpability in the child's death, but the children have been taken away from her. It is a sad case and an unnecessary death. Also involved in this case is Child Protective Services. CPS...
Seattle lost an icon earlier this month when Dick Spady, the 92-year old founder of Dick’s Drive-In restaurants, died. He was an entrepreneur who took a risk, worked hard, treated his workers and customers well, sold an excellent product at an affordable price, and did his part to make his community and country a better place to live and raise a family. Dick Spady was a pacesetter in the fast food industry which developed a full-head of steam in the 1950s. He was quick to recognize a business opportunity and believed that people wanted a f...
Reasons for levy My name is Weston Claassen. I am a 1990 graduate of Colfax School District. I received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Biola University in 1994. This is where I met my wife Jennifer of twenty years. We married and she moved to our community to join me on our family farm. I am a proud fourth generation graduate of Colfax High School, so when I was asked to serve on the Committee for quality schools in support of the 2015 Colfax School Replacement Levy, I was excited to have this opportunity. Jennifer and I have five...
The lazy conventional wisdom is that Ted Cruz is the new Barry Goldwater, doomed to suffer an electoral landslide defeat should he win the Republican nomination. Not only is this wrong about Cruz's general-election chances, it may compare Cruz to the wrong 20th-century Republican forebear. The better analogue for Cruz might be Richard Nixon, not in the crudely pejorative sense, but as another surpassingly shrewd and ambitious politician who lacked a personal touch but found a way to win nonetheless. First, all the caveats. Obviously and most...
