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Dishonesty, lying and cheating are not treated with the right amount of opprobrium in today’s society. To gain an appreciation for the significance of honesty and trust, consider what our day-to-day lives would be like if we couldn’t trust anyone. When we purchase a bottle of 100 pills from our pharmacist, how many of us bother to count the pills? We pull in to a gasoline station and pay $35 for 10 gallons of gasoline. How do we know for sure whether we in fact received 10 gallons instead of 9 3/4? You pay $7 for a 1-p...
Barack Obama looks exhausted these days. He looks about as tired, in other words, as the nation feels. He knows this. At a speech Saturday, he said that people are always telling him to “hang in there.” “Don’t worry about me!” Obama said. “I am still fired up ... because I still see the work that needs to be done!” The audience cheered and applauded his old slogan from 2008 — “Fired up! Ready to go!” — the old fire in the belly, the old Obama. But by Sunday, he seemed drained again. Speaking at a memorial to those sla...
This year began with women holding commanding leads in races to become the next mayor of America’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles. It was “hers to lose,” the chattering class said of Wendy Greuel, former LA city controller and president pro tem of the Los Angeles City Council. It was “hers to lose,” the chattering class said of Christine Quinn, speaker of the New York City Council. And then they both lost. No one is saying that they lost “because” of their gender. But the reality that these two women — both...
At the risk of calling in the proverbial air strike on my head, here goes. In 2008, then Attorney General Rob McKenna joined then State Auditor Brian Sonntag to introduce House Bill 3292 – a measure that would have required the taping of executive sessions by the respective legislative body. In a position paper supporting the legislation – which never got out of committee – the conservative-leaning Washington Policy Center cited examples of executive session missteps by elected bodies from the Lewis County Board of Commi...
Last week, the state Legislature submitted a report to the Washington State Supreme Court, detailing its progress to fulfilling the now-infamous McCleary decision, requiring the full funding of primary education in Washington. The decision set in stone a timeline to recoup education budget cuts made at the state level. In June, $1.03 billion was set to be appropriated to public schools over the next two years, $982 million of which includes spending for basic education. A task force stated the state would need to increase...
On Sept. 17, 1787, 42 delegates from 13 colonies met at Independence Hall in Philadelphia to sign the Constitution of the United States. The four-page, handwritten document they signed that day is now considered by many to embody the greatest expression of statesmanship and compromise ever written. When it went into effect, a new nation known as the United States of America officially came into being. That new nation and its Constitution expressed a movement toward liberty that was in direct contradiction to the long held bel...
The economy is still struggling, gas prices are high, Congress is debating potential actions in the Middle East, JJ Abrams has placed his love of Star Wars above Star Trek and the Mariners are still in the cellar of the American League West. I tell you, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So, forget all about that doom and gloom and let’s turn for a brief second to something that never changes: tea. Yes, this is a column about tea. And, cue the action-packed text! I’ve always been a tea lover. When I was you...
Back on Aug. 31 when Vernon Adams’ touchdown run with 23 seconds remaining helped propel Eastern Washington to a stunning 49-46 upset victory over Oregon State, the news shocked the college football world. After all, the only thing the Eagles were to leave Corvallis with besides their battered, bruised and bloodied frames in what Oregonian columnist Ken Goe has now famously termed a “body bag” game was the nearly $500,000 promised payday. Nichols State, a fellow Football Championship Subdivision team was massacred 77-3 last...
Webster’s dictionary tells us that Labor Day was “set aside for special recognition of working people.” That’s nice, but “set aside” by whom? It certainly wasn’t the Wall Street corporate and political powers that be. They nearly swallowed their cigars when the idea of honoring labor’s importance to America’s economy and social well-being was first proposed in 1882. Rather, this holiday was created by the workers themselves, requiring a 12-year grassroots struggle that finally culminated with an act of Congress in 1894....
It’s interesting how a train of thought can develop. For instance, nearing the end of our 12-mile round trip hike along the Dungeness Spit north of Sequim last Saturday, we noticed a sea lion swimming towards us. He or she may not have noticed us standing in the grayish, post-sunset twilight along the shoreline because it was definitely swimming with the purpose of making landfall. Once the animal noticed us, it pulled up, went into a holding pattern and followed us, maybe out of curiosity, as we walked further along the b...
Coal dust is indeed a major problem. My wife and I were along a trail in Ponderay, Idaho several times last week. When empty coal trains returning passed us on the BNSF rail line we could smell coal dust. On two different mornings we could also see coal dust rising from the empty gondolas. I do not where these trains unloaded their cargo but if the coal plant (Boardman, Ore.) nearest our location in Idaho; we were approximately a distance of 300 miles that the train had traveled before reaching us. This implies that the...
By the time you read this, events surrounding potential military action against Syria will have likely changed several times over. In the few days since the Cheney Free Press editorial board discussed the issue of a military strike against the Assad regime for its alleged use of sarin gas against its own people in the two-year-old civil war, events have swung dramatically. For starters, some public opinion polls prior to last week indicated 9 percent of respondents were in favor of military action, rising to 25 percent if...
In Brockton, Mass., about 30 minutes from where I live, someone beat a 74-year-old man to death with a hammer. Oddly (or maybe not), I have some experience with hammer attacks. I’ve helped cover two of them in the last 10 years — one fatal, one not. The best thing about a hammer killing is not the tearing screams of the victim, though you’d think it would be. It’s not the impressive “splatter factor” caused when the skull is smashed by a claw hammer (especially true if you use the claw end). It’s not even the once-in-a-lif...
Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in. It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members — a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra. Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. He’s been talking about dredging the port of Charleston, for exa...
Spokane County Fire District 3 Fire Chief Bruce Holloway says last week’s 50-acre fire near Depot Springs Road cost an estimated $150,000–$200,000 to fight and contain. That’s nothing compared to the over $1 billion already spent this year fighting more than 33,000 fires burning 3.4 million acres nationally, including 40 large wildfires from Arizona to Alaska. Among those are the Lodgepole and Beaver Creek fires in central Idaho, Big Windy Complex and Government Flat Complex in Oregon and the Conrad Lake fire in Washi...
Environmental activists claim they want to reduce production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. If so, they’re going about it in a very strange way. Take forest management, for example. Anti-forestry activists oppose salvaging dead and diseased trees, saying the forests should be left in their natural state. But that debris is volatile tinder for raging wildfires that pump an average of 67 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, according to a 2013 r...
There really is nothing like the start of a road trip. You’re excited, ready to get on the open road and the weather is usually pretty good. As I write this, I’ve just finished the first of a four-day venture throughout our great state. Like all trips, there were hiccups, but the great thing about traveling is quite simply the opportunity to see something new. I’ve never been to Grand Coulee Dam, but crossed that off my list this afternoon. Simply put, it lives up to its name. Grand. Driving along Highway 2 shows just how g...
The following editorial is reprinted from the Aug. 19 Orange County Register. You may have noticed food prices creeping higher. Officially, the U.S. Consumer Price Index shows inflation at less than 2 percent a year in recent years. But for the past 20 years, the CPI has included only “core CPI,” which excludes prices for energy and food, supposedly because they’re too volatile. But we still need food and gas. “According to the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve, food inflation was 22 percent between January 2006 an...
City of Cheney • Aug. 27, City Council Meeting, 6 p.m., City Council Chambers City of Medical Lake • No news City of Airway Heights • Aug. 26, City Council study session, 5:30 p.m., Council Chambers Cheney School District • No news Medical Lake School District • Aug. 27, District staff Right Response training, 8 a.m. School Board meeting 6 p.m., administration office • Aug. 28, District staff Right Response training, 8 a.m. • Aug. 28, High school fall sports parent meeting, 6 p.m. Eastern Washington University • No news...
It’s a rare issue that brings together Washington’s agricultural industry, immigration rights groups, business associations, faith organizations and politicians from both sides of the aisle. After years of hard work by many organizations and individuals in the state and elsewhere, the U.S. Senate passed a bi-partisan immigration reform bill that promises to benefit Washington’s agriculture, its economy and many people living and working here. We are so close to achieving this long-sought goal that we can’t let this opportu...
On Monday, Aug. 5, actually early Tuesday morning, I returned home from my third mission trip to Guatemala. It was my third trip to this country, second consecutive year, and I have no doubt it will not be my last. As with my first two trips, I learned a lot, experienced a lot and return home with new insights and in some cases, emotions. I also carry changed attitudes and, hopefully, expanded and reinforced beliefs. One of those is a renewed sense of the educational value of travel. Yes, I realize a mission trip is...
With most of our troops being withdrawn from service in Afghanistan by 2014, there may be an area where some of them could be used to address a pressing issue at home. That issue is immigration, specifically border security and mainly along our border with Mexico. Republicans in Congress have made increased border security a condition for passing an immigration reform bill that would change the status of over 11 million immigrants here illegally. Currently, border security staffing is at an all-time high and technology used...
The answer to one question in the most recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News national poll startled an awful lot of my friends and colleagues in the press corps who are pro-choice. Because it is written and conducted by two respected pollsters, Democrat Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff, the Journal-NBC survey is trusted for both its professionalism and its fairness. So when, by a 44 percent to 37 percent margin, a plurality of Americans — including a plurality of college-educated women (by 44 percent to 40 percent) — an...
When our country was founded, Thomas Jefferson declared that governments should only derive their power from the “consent of the governed.” Four score and seven years later, at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln reminded us that ours was a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Last week, the House of Representatives paid worthy tribute to the legacy of our Founding Fathers. We have renewed our commitment to putting people before politics. Last week (July 22-26), House Republicans took legislative actio...
As the new school year approaches, an old discussion topic was at hand during a recent meeting of the Medical Lake school board. That was whether some critiques of the teachings of Darwinism ought not to be part of the curriculum. The nearly decade-old matter was likely put in the grave by the school board at their Tuesday, July 23 meeting, however. School district officials have indicated they will follow state standards that lead to the new Common Core state standards, which will likely be in place in 2014. Darwinism, from...
