Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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I think we’ve missed one possible explanation for Rudy Giuliani’s behavior: Maybe he’s concealing the fact that he suffered a blow to the head severe enough to cause lasting damage to his prefrontal cortex. That’s the high-function part of the brain that controls, among many things, the ability to inhibit impulses, allowing us to regulate what we say and do. Actually, chances are that it’s not that at all, that Giuliani is continuing his very calculated effort to stay relevant by appealing to the ugliest emotions of the Republican Party’s base....
Local Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers found a dead bald eagle on an island in the South Fork of the Palouse River last week. It had been shot by a rifle. Since it is a federal offense to kill an eagle, the case is being led by U.S. Fish and Wildlife who is partnering with local WDFW officers in the investigation. They are investigating the case and will determine what kind of rifle was used to kill the eagle. With that kind of evidence, they hope to find the person who shot the eagle. When interviewing both officers, the...
Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2010. My parents are the kind of people who believe that dogs understand full sentences, like this: “OK, we’re going to the store, we’ll be gone a couple of hours, please stay out of the trash and don’t lie on my bed, that’s off limits and you know it!” What the dog thinks: Bed! So my father is perplexed that his two canines continue to bark at everyone who comes to the door, even though he’s sternly delivered his sermon “Thou Shalt Not Bark at the Person at the Door Unless He Is...
The fierce competition between Seattle’s Alaska Airlines and Atlanta’s Delta Airlines is spilling over to the Port of Seattle, and it may reach your wallet in the form of higher airfares. The Port commission, which manages Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, must decide whether to build a new international arrivals terminal at the south end of the airport or expand the north satellite to accommodate additional domestic flights. The commission prefers the international terminal, but there’s a problem — the price keeps ratcheting up. It star...
Hooray for Rich Lowry! “...Fifty Shades of Grey perhaps the most successful anti-feminist movie ever made.” Well said, Rich! As a woman who was (and still is) a feminist, I was appalled when I found out what the Grey books were about. Does anyone remember “I Am Woman”? Gloria Steinem? Bella Abzug? Poor Bella is probably spinning in her grave. In 1972, I started singing professionally. I was in the filthiest industry on earth, basically legal prostitution and pornography. For 30 years. Oddly enough, in the 70s, it wasn’t about sex or shock val...
The IRS scandals just keep on coming. First, the agency targeted conservative groups seeking non-profit status. Originally characterized by IRS officials as a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati, the practice was later revealed to be a politically-motivated campaign coordinated by Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit. Then, Lerner’s infamous “missing” emails blocked investigators’ efforts to discover if the White House was involved. Now, the Internal Revenue Service is under fire for using federal law to seize the ban...
Thelma and Louise should be appalled. Almost 25 years after their epic road movie attacked “conventional patterns of chauvinist male behavior toward females” (in the words of one critic), here arrives “Fifty Shades of Grey,” perhaps the most successful anti-feminist movie ever made. The runaway best-selling novel is now a juggernaut on the big screen, driven by overwhelmingly female audiences that accounted for its record-breaking opening weekend. The dirty secret of “Fifty Shades” is that, underneath the kinky exterior, it’s a formulaic rom...
Who would have predicted that the head of the FBI could give a speech about cops and racial bias that would be so thoughtful and so balanced that it was embraced by both law-enforcement officials and those who have protested police tactics and have grievances about brutal racial discrimination. Certainly it was a surprise to most of us who have watched the intense animosity build, particularly since the deaths of blacks at the hands of white cops in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; and Cleveland. The nation has been split into...
Here we are at an important point in history: Terrorists are threatening the world. And, we debate over what they should be called. President Barrack Obama has been roundly criticized for trying to separate the terrorists from the Islamic religion. He says they have perverted Islam and should not be considered a part of it. Others say that he is being too politically correct for not calling them what they say they are, Islamic terrorists. Consequently, a debate continues over how we should refer to them. At times, it is more intense than...
Follow up This letter is written as a follow-up to the article in the Feb. 12, 2015, Gazette by Don C. Brunell entitled “Failing Businesses a Sign of Weak Economy”. The low percentage of people gainfully employed is also a sign of a weak economy. The great depression in the 1930s was prolonged for over ten years by increased taxes, increased government regulations, and by government interference and control of the economy. It took the Second World War, sending millions of our men overseas and employing many people for wartime production, to...
In his State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted plunging gas prices. Ironic, since Obama has done everything in his power to curtail domestic oil production and drive up gas prices. For example, the president wants to lock up untapped federal oil reserves surrounding the Trans-Alaska pipeline. If he succeeds, he will choke off future oil supplies to the pipeline, bleeding it dry and forcing it to shut down and be dismantled. That will not only hurt Alaska, but Washington and the Pacific Northwest as well. Refineries in our state...
Port premature I was disappointed to read that the Port of Whitman has prematurely decided to support abandonment of the railbed between Colfax and Pullman rather than rail bank it. Furthermore, it is disappointing that the Commissioners met only with representatives of the self-proclaimed “Friends of the Railroad” and not with citizens truly interested in preserving the rail bed before adopting this position. Abandonment is antithetical to the Port’s mission statement which says “The Port of Whitman is dedicated to improving the quality of lif...
Where is Chris Kyle when you need him? The late hero of the movie “American Sniper” made no apology for killing as many members of al-Qaida in Iraq, the precursor of ISIS, as he could get in his rifle sights. After a captured Jordanian pilot was burned alive, who would object to Kyle, or any other American sniper, shooting down these murderous fanatics if he could get access to them? And who would quibble with Kyle’s characterization of these people as “savages”? Part of what the left finds objectionable about Kyle is his unshakable moral cer...
We all know what a “homer” is; that sportscaster or columnist who shamelessly boosts the home team, which is his or her bread and butter. In fact, usually the team approves the announcers to guarantee this lovefest. It’s irritating but acceptable in the sports world, but it’s ridiculous when it comes to speaking about our nation or, dare I say it, religion. Unfortunately that’s rampant too, with pandering commentators and politicians ready to leap anytime anybody has the audacity to suggest that the home country or the home religion should ge...
Brian Williams is off the air as NBC’s nightly news anchor. At first, he said he would take off a few days when the scandal about his elaboration or fabrication of stories first hit. Then, NBC announced he was suspended for six months as doubts about him grew. Williams has been accused of misrepresenting or at least embellishing news stories. The first questionable story was about being under enemy fire in Iraq. Then, his recollections about Hurricane Katrina came under scrutiny. The network is investigating the incidents and much more. S...
It was interesting while it lasted, but the 2016 election is now officially “bought.” The purchasers are the Koch brothers, and the price, a cool $889 million. The news that the network organized by David and Charles Koch plans to spend roughly $900 million in the 2016 cycle has freaked out Democrats, outraged so-called campaign-finance reformers and inspired hand-wringing about the future of the planet Earth. The despair is misplaced. One sign it is still a free country is that a band of like-minded people, devoted to principles they con...
For the first time in American history, entrepreneurship is in decline. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, businesses are dying faster than they’re being formed. Each year, 400,000 new businesses start up nationwide; 470,000 close their doors. Gallup reports that in the 1980s, business startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year, a trend that continued until the 2008 recession. Now, after six years of sluggish economic recovery, the entrepreneurial death rate in the U.S. is outpacing its birth rate. In fact, the U.S. now r...
I’m about to be very right or very wrong. I’m glad it doesn’t matter in newsbiz, because no one remembers what any of us writes or says; but for what it’s worth, I believe that Rand Paul has a decent shot at becoming not only the Republican nominee, but taking all the marbles in the general election next year. Speaking of marbles, did you see and hear Sarah Palin completely losing hers when she spoke at that hard-right Iowa political event? Her disjointed comments left her exposed to a lot of ridicule, including from people in her own party....
Daylight Savings Rep. Elizabeth Scott, R-Monroe, says that staying on standard time all year long would simplify our lives. I see it exactly the opposite. Here are my reasons for staying on the current saving time/standard time schedule. Reason one:. During summer, daylight begins at approximately 4:00 a.m. if we were on standard time. Most people do not get up until approximately 6:00 a.m. So two hours of daylight are not used except to sleep. In the evening the extra daylight is a welcome advantage so people can work in their gardens, golf, r...
Not so long ago, measles was a fact of life. Then, because of effective vaccines and public health programs, measles was all but wiped out. The word itself dropped from common parlance. Now it is back, spreading to vulnerable populations. The number of people infected still is not great, but the disease is wildly contagious. The return and spread of measles is not because of some genetic evolution of the virus or lack of medicine. It is instead because many parents have decided not to get their children inoculated. In part, that is because of...
Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2010. You’d think I’d enjoy a baby shower — after all, I like to see babies (I even was a baby once), and I like to take showers. But I’ve always elected to avoid them because no one has ever invited me. That all changed when a former co-worker asked a bunch of us over to celebrate her former pregnancy. She now had a little 6-month-old girl she named Andie and wanted to throw a coed baby shower so all of the men would feel stupid. See, baby showers have their own rules and their...
Can you imagine a nation’s president, a former guerilla fighter with socialist leanings, enacting policies that favor business and encourage foreign investment? How about a leader who prefers living in a farmhouse rather than the presidential mansion? That person is José Mujica, the 79-year old president of Uruguay who finishes his five-year term in March. Uruguay, a small South American country sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, does not allow a president to stand for reelection, so later this spring, Mujica will take a seat in the se...
The White House has now become a stickler for protocol, especially when it comes to relations between the two political branches. The new persnicketiness arises from House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress in March. The invite is being denounced as a major breach and new low in Washington because he didn’t, as had been the traditional practice with such invitations, coordinate with the White House. As far as violations of the separation of powers in the Oba...
This column received this week was written before Mitt Romney announced he would not run for president. Do politicians flat-out lie, or do they merely backtrack? The answer is both, but in Mitt Romney’s case, the backtracking is so frequent, so practiced, that the guy rivals Michael Jackson with his moonwalking. A little traipse down memory lane to the 2012 campaign reveals how frantically Romney reversed himself whenever it was expedient. Pro-choice in an earlier political incarnation? No problem in 2012, when he needed to be pro-life. A leadi...
The Seattle Seahawks lost Super Bowl XLIX. With 26 seconds left in the game, the Seahawks were on the one-yard line. They had two downs and one time out to make a touchdown. What do they do? They pass. The ball is intercepted. The New England Patriots win. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was immediately savaged by fans, the press and just about everyone else for the call. Still, it was a great, close game and a great show. That pass was not the only bad Super Bowl moment. The Nationwide commercial is another one. But, Kim Kardashian and husband Kan...
