Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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“Sir, this is Patton talking ... You have just got to make up Your mind whose side You’re on. You must come to my assistance, so that I may dispatch the entire German Army as a birthday present to your Prince of Peace ...” — Prayer of Gen. George S. Patton, Dec. 23, 1944 It is with Patton’s plea to the Ultimate Commanding General that Stanley Weintraub opens his book, “11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944.” It’s the tale of the worst Christmas for American soldiers since Valley Forge. The Allied breakout from Normandy after...
There have been so many times when we’ve been looking at issues in the wrong way. This is one of them. When Republican representatives, led by Paul Broun (Never-Heard-of-Him from Georgia), demanded that President Barack Obama be denied an invitation to make a State of the Union address in January, it was viewed by many as a petulant reaction to the president’s sweeping immigration executive order. That’s probably because it was. Broun also was derided as just another conservative who simply can’t get it into his head that Mr. Obama legitim...
It has been a bloody week. In Pakistan, 132 school kids were killed by Taliban murderers, shouting God is Great. In Sydney, Australia, a coffee shop was taken over by a crazed man resulting in a hostage situation and standoff with police. Three including the gunman were killed. Then, in America, a father killed six members of his ex-wife’s family before he killed himself. The hatchet attacks in New York, the vehicular assault and attack on Parliament in Canada and the furor over police shootings in this country all paint a gruesome picture o...
Rioters in Ferguson, Missouri shattered the windows of Natalie’s Cakes and More and vandalized the baking equipment. However, when owner Natalie Dubose put her story on the internet, Americans immediately responded, donating more than $260,000 to help her rebuild her business. The money was more than Dubose, an African-American small business owner, needed so she used the surplus donations to help the other 60 or so proprietors rebuild in the St. Louis suburb. The contributions were timely, because it helped her immediately restore her shop a...
Outrage So Republican House of Representatives leadership is outraged by President Obama’s executive action on immigration reform, claiming “this is not the way democracy is supposed to work.” But democracy is supposed to work by majority rule, and the real outrage is that Republican leadership, including our Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, has never allowed a vote of the full House on the bipartisan immigration bill passed 17 months ago by the Senate, even though the bill has long had enough House votes to pass. This bill, that Obama...
The White House response to Ferguson wouldn’t be complete without a meeting with Al Sharpton, the infamous agitator who has become President Barack Obama’s “go-to man on race,” in the words of a Politico headline from last August. So Sharpton was inevitably one of the civil-rights leaders at the White House. The president no doubt passed up the opportunity to direct Sharpton to the Treasury Department up the street, which would surely love to have him visit and make good on all the taxes he has avoided paying through the years. A New York Ti... Full story
All law enforcement agencies are gearing up. They are following a long-held holiday tradition. They will be conducting emphasis patrols looking for impaired drivers. In the old days, that meant drunk drivers. Now, it means much more than that. Now, new concerns involve drivers on marijuana and other drugs. Additionally, dangers persist with inattentive drivers. These include those texting and using cell phones. We have seen the dangers of all these different types of drivers. Accidents, some fatal, have marked the highways in and around the...
Remember the Occupy movement, with all the encampments across the nation, populated by citizens taking on the 1 percent? At best, we have a vague recollection of them and their noble cause, which was to shame the country into doing something about the toxic inequality of our wealth. We took notice for a while, then lost interest as the media switched to others stories du jour. It wasn’t long before the authorities were able to sweep away their protest with nary a squeak in return from any of us, while also brushing off any hope for reform. L... Full story
Jonathon Gruber recently created a stir with his comments about Obamacare and “the stupidity of the American voter.” Gruber, an MIT economist, was one of the architects of the President’s health reform law. Recently, videotape surfaced of Gruber’s appearances over the past several years in which he described how the drafters of Obamacare used deception and manipulation to get the bill passed. In one venue, Gruber noted that because taxes were a hard sell politically, “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressi...
To think that President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office four times (through accidents of circumstance, twice each time he was elected). Taking the oath must have become such old hat that he stopped paying attention. The president is issuing an executive amnesty for illegal immigrants based on blatant contempt for the constitutional order that he is sworn to uphold. Where does Abraham Lincoln go to get his Bible back? There are many opponents of the president’s unilateral action, but few as eloquent as the president himself through t...
Now that Barack Obama, with his immigration executive order, has taken off the gloves and, in effect, raised that time-honored gesture of defiance to Republican “members of Congress who question my authority.” They are angrily throwing down their own gauntlets, basically saying that he and (to quote John Boehner) his “lawless” presidency are toast, with no chance they’ll deal with him. Don’t you believe it. We certainly can expect the GOP House and Senate to do their very best to make Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hil...
Remembered I so enjoyed the update on Clarita Liddle. She was my 4th grade teacher over 50 years ago. She left quite an impression on me and had a huge impact on my yearning for knowledge over the years. I remember doing a small newspaper in her class that I eagerly embraced and just retired from the newspaper industry after over 40 years. She pointed me in the direction of the newspaper industry as did Jim Stack and Bill Wilmot when I grew up in Colfax. My life was very fruitful due to their efforts and passion for the industry. God Bless... Full story
Nobody knows for sure, but the protests and rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, might have been avoided by virtue of a simple little camera. Many police departments around the country are requiring their officers to wear cameras. Although the practice is relatively new, many violent incidents between police and civilians have been recorded. For years, civilian videos and dash board cameras have been used to record violent moments between law enforcement and the public. An example is the Rodney King episode. Few could square the violence of his...
Thirteen students led the Colton honor roll for the first quarter with all-A grades. They included Savannah Chadwick, Sam Faerber and Winne Schultheis, seniors; Brady Chadwick, Kendyl Druffel and Peter Schultheis, sophomores; Erin Anderson, Reece Chadwick, Jordyn Moehrle, Brady Stout, Luke Vining and Rachel Willis, eighth grade, and Kian Ankerson, seventh grade. Highest honor students with grade averages of 3.4 to 3.99 included Emily Devlin, Carrie Hennigar, Courtney Hoyle, Courtney Kimberling, Cody Meyer, Lane Moore, Phil Niekenke and Kamryn...
The epic search of the Greek philosopher Diogenes for an honest man is finally over. His name is Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist once known as an intellectual architect of Obamacare, although his status is being rapidly downgraded by the law’s supporters with every one of his uncomfortably frank utterances about President Barack Obama’s signature initiative. Video surfaced of Gruber saying at a panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania last year that the law was written in a deceptive, nontransparent way to exploit “the stupi...
Thanksgiving is a time to gather with family and friends and give thanks for the blessings we enjoy. For others, it’s a time to volunteer at soup kitchens to help the less fortunate. For still others, it’s simply a chance to eat a huge meal and watch football. In reality, most Americans have no idea how fortunate we are. With the exception of military families, too few of us have fought to protect the freedoms we have. Few people alive today experienced the depravation of the Great Depression. A full one-third of our population was born aft...
Mitch McConnell and John Boehner’s Republicans may control Congress now, but it’s an open question as to whether McConnell and Boehner control their own party caucuses. That’s an important consideration, because as they try to work out their deals with the White House, at some point they’ll have to convince President Barack Obama and the Democrats that they can deliver enough of their members. There are all sorts of indications that they will not be able to guarantee the votes needed after the give-and-take is done. You have Ted Cruz in the...
Mail call As the holidays roll around I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge all the wonderful post office employees. As the catalogs in my mailbox multiply I think of all the sorters separating them and the carriers hauling them around. Of course all this comes about with unpredictable weather. Driving or walking through rain, fog, snow, and ice is a daily challenge. Let’s not forgot the eager dogs awaiting the arrival of the mail or the straying cattle, chickens, deer, or tumbleweeds along the road. I have always looked f... Full story
It was the day after Thanksgiving a number of years ago. My son wanted to outfit his new college apartment. After a long icy drive, our Black Friday expedition started with us standing in line about a quarter of a mile from the store doors. It was still dark, and the wind, rain and sleet had everybody bundled up. Like horses, we all had our backs to the weather. Some of those standing in line optimistically recounted their plans to get items they wanted. One even had a hand-drawn map of the store layout showing her route from item to item....
Dolores Haley welcomes the Nighthawk volleyball team to a cream tea party in their honor Friday afternoon at the McCoy Valley Museum in Oakesdale. Patty Johnson and Carol Marshall helped serve. The stylish hats worn by the attendees were loaned from Marilyn Kilpatrick’s collection. Apple pie scones, chocolate cake and lemon bars prepared by Mrs. Haley were served on china dishes and tea and hot apple cider in china teacups....
Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast in 2005, flooding cities and towns in four states and killing more than 1,800 people. The government response to Katrina, especially by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), became the poster child for an inept and incompetent bureaucracy. But out of this disaster has come a story of success. The hurricane gave New Orleans educators the opportunity to reinvent the city’s failing public schools. Two years before the storm struck, the state had created the Louisiana Recovery School District (...
Closer look This letter is in response to an article in the Whitman Gazette, regarding the proposed budget cuts in the Whitman County Health Department. Having worked in Public Health for 23 years and been an administrator for 15 of those years, I am concerned with the budget cuts and direction the Health Department is being forced to take regarding staff and services. The County Commissioners (Board of Health) have asked for budget cuts annually for 10 or more years. I have faced those budget reductions and I was able to save services for the...
In a fit of postelection modesty, President Barack Obama is offering not to take executive action to amnesty millions of illegal immigrants — provided Republicans do his bidding on immigration. It is extortion as conciliation. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie often invites comparisons to “The Sopranos,” but it is President Obama who is making a tactic out of the HBO mob drama his major postelection initiative. His bipartisan outreach now ends with a pointed “Or else ...” This offer Republicans can’t refuse includes the stipulation that the pr... Full story
Will somebody please explain why a reporter is not allowed to impersonate an FBI agent, but it’s OK if an FBI agent impersonates a reporter? It’s obvious why no one should be allowed to dishonestly pass him- or herself off as a law-enforcement official, but it also should be apparent why any cop, federal or local, should not be pretending to be a newsperson. It undermines our credibility, and given the sloppy performance of too many in our business, we don’t have a lot of credibility to spare. Let’s face it: Someone with sensitive material abou...
Tonight is the opening night for the Colfax High School. The play is South Pacific, an American classic by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The annual plays at CHS have become a tradition for both the public and students. It is no mean feat to line up a cast of high school, and sometimes grade school, students to stage a broadway play, especially a musical familiar to nearly every American. Yet, drama teacher Cary Cammack is able to put on a show every year. Productions such as this are important in schools. Many area schools put on plays. They give...
