I’m not quite ready to turn controls of Huckleberries Online Central over to Cindy. But I’m close. I’ll let her recover a bit more from her night of carouseling with other Merry Hucksters at HBO After Hours, Spokane style. She’ll be sitting at the controls Monday morning while I begin my week of unpaid furlough. Seems someone at HBO After Hours suggested a women’s thread for the coming week. So you might be looking for that. Or other experiments by Cindy. I plan to take it easy and maybe do a little gardening. Now, for the Saturday Wild Card …

Item: Simpson refuses to disqualify himself from the Brannon case/Tom Hasslinger, Coeur d’Alene Press

More Info: First District Judge Benjamin Simpson isn’t going anywhere. Simpson ruled Friday evening that he would remain as the judge presiding over the election challenge lawsuit, saying that an unfavorable ruling against the Plaintiff Jim Brannon isn’t enough to remove a judge from the bench. “Objections to the court’s power to set the bond amount are not supported in the law or by the facts of the case,” Simpson wrote in his ruling. Brannon, Simpson concludes in his ruling, “has failed to carry his burden of proof with his respect to bias or prejudice.”

Question: Reaction?

A Transportation Security Administration (TXA) agent, right, scans airline passenger Kelsi Dunbar, using X-ray technology that can see through people’s clothes and show the body’s contours with blush-inducing clarity at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. (AP File Photo/The Arizona Republic, Jack Kurtz)

The House Transportation and Defense Committee has approved Rep. Phil Hart’s, R-Athol, bill to limit the use of whole-body imaging machines in airports and government building in Idaho, though Hart’s legislation has some issues yet to be resolved. Under Hart’s plan, security personnel in airports, or other public facilities, would be prohibited from using the scanners as a primary means for ensuring the safety of a respective facility.  The bill says that screeners must first use an alternative method of screening, such as a metal detector, as the primary inspection method/Dustin Hurst, Idaho Reporter. More here. Also: Hart’s plan to restrict technology in driver’s licenses clears committee/Dustin Hurst, Idaho Reporter

Question: Do you support Hart’s bill?

he Washington Democrats’ scheme to seduce the electorate into granting Olympia the power to afflict the state with an income tax is a stark reminder of why we should never trust them. While thrashing about for ideas on how best to close the state’s budget chasm, Senator Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, cooked up a quintessentially Democratic idea for having the citizenry give her the power to enact an income tax: Impose an income tax on evil rich people, while reducing the sales tax for everyone else. This conforms to the legendary Louisiana U.S. Sen. Russell B. Long’s definition of tax reform: “Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.” As a reward for granting politicians the power to impose an income tax, the great majority of Washingtonians would see tax relief for doing what Brown considers the right thing. It’s that guy behind that tree who will get stuck with the bill. The Washington state constitution just about forbids politicians from imposing an income tax and it certainly prohibits a plot such as Brown’s/Mike Costello, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: Should Washington adopt an state income tax to help balance its budget?

Why is Gov. C. L. (Butch) Otter taking ownership for one of his predecessor’s worst foul-ups? Responding to a series of editorials, Otter - joined by House Speaker Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale and Senate President Robert Geddes, R-Soda Springs — recently rejected out of hand any attempt to repeal the 2006 measure that removed the last vestige of basic public school support from the property tax and replaced it with a one-cent rate hike in the sales tax. “The vast majority of Idahoans supported that change and with good reason,” the GOP trio wrote in an op-ed column that appeared Sunday in the Tribune. “Now with property values down along with the economy, reversing it would shortchange schools and impose a crushing burden on local property taxpayers who already are struggling at a time that we’re trying to revive - not suffocate - Idaho’s economy.” Otter’s being too generous. Much of the budget grief he’s now enduring stems from that 2006 tax shift. And the governor responsible isn’t Otter. His name is Jim Risch/Marty Trillhaase, Lewiston Tribune. More here

Question: Do you agree with Opinion Editor Marty Trillhaase that the move in special session by former Gov. Jim Risch to shift school maintenance & operations from the property tax to the sales tax is fueling the economic mess in the state today?

Cindy and about a dozen other Merry Hucksters staged a HBO After Hours event at O’Doherty’s on Spokane Falls Boulevard Friday night to welcome in the St. Paddy’s Day weekend. Here’s what she learned:

• 1. Guinness is a beer that lingers on the tongue until a Blue Moon washes the taste away.
• 2. OtisG has a fearsome five-year-old daughter who WRESTLES.
• 3. ME thinks we should have a “Ladies” thread next week.
• 4. Kevin Taylor doesn’t have a cell phone.
• 5. Mavis says my green beer + my blue beer will = brown. But I don’t want to think about that.
• 6. BethB had was invited to tour the Guinness castle with Desmond and Penny and PASSED.
• 7. MeghanC has a friend named Lucky Sunny Day. There’s a Burning Man story involved.
• 8. I’m the only one in the UNIVERSE without a Facebook account (until after this weekend anyway).
• 9. JeanieS is addicted to Facebook.
• 10. Bent actually BELIEVED JBelle would make an appearance.

Question: What post would you like to see Cindy make next week while I’m on my furlough that you usually don’t see at Huckleberries Online?

Tania Dall/KXLY made the following report from tapes released by the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department in the Hayden shooting earlier this week. You can hear the 911 tape by clicking here.

• Dispatcher: “Who is the shooter? That’s what I’m asking.
• ”Starnes: “His name is Chad Moore, M-o-o-r-e.”
• Starnes: “I have a very faint pulse on him, please hurry.
• ”Dispatcher: “I know, they’re coming. They’re coming as fast as they can lights and sirens.”
• Starnes: “Baby you gotta wake up (inaudible) Breathe Ryan please. No they’re coming.”
• (A Kootenai County Sheriff detective says that Chad Moore fired a total of nine rounds from a .45 caliber handgun at Taylor, hitting him five times in the head, knee, calf, thigh and foot. Detectives say the shot to the head is what ultimately ended Taylor’s life.Starnes: “I have a very, very faint pulse.)
• ”Dispatcher: “OK is there anything you can put on the wound to stop the bleeding?”
• Starnes: “Do you have any towels or anything I can put on his wound?”

Question: Why are people so angry today?

Joe Heller/Hellertoons

The free ride may be over for online news customers of the New York Times and newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch (pictured). Breitbart reported today that media heavyweights debated Thursday whether readers will pay for news on the Internet. Quote: “The Times plans to require payment for full access to NYTimes.com in early 2011 and Murdoch, who already charges for The Wall Street Journal online, has pledged to begin charging Web readers of his other News Corp. newspapers.” Admittedly, something has to happen to make online news gathering and reports profitable. But is this it?/Breitbart. More here.

Question: Would you pay for online news?

Colin Shober of Schuylkill Valley High School gets a leg in the face as he takes down Alex Stanton of Blue Ridge High School during their AA 140 Pound Class semi-final match today in Hershey, Pa., at the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships. Shober advanced. (Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

I’ll be turning the controls of HBO Central over to Cindy next week, while I enjoy 5 days of unpaid furlough, chauffeuring in-laws and gardening. Mebbe I’ll even repaint the chimney, if the sun shines enough. I don’t like taking off a week when the last of the candidate filings will occur. So you guys shouldn’t hesitate to post new filings or other tidbits of information under the Wild Cards. Meanwhile, Cindy, Bent, ME, and others are planning a Guinness salute to St. Patrick’s Day in downtown Spokane at 5:30 p.m. today, sort of an HBO After Hours, to get ready for handling things here. But I’m not gone yet. So I’ll post this Wild Card and go in search of other topics …

Florida Highway Patrol officers say Megan Barnes crashed into the back of a pickup truck because she was distracted while driving, but not because of talking or texting or changing the radio channel. She was distracted, according to officers, because she was driving while shaving her “bikini area.” But wait, there’s more. Barnes was in the driver’s seat, quite literally on the razor’s edge, while her ex-husband steered from the passenger seat. She was driving in Cudjoe Key, Fla. to meet her current boyfriend, presumably the reason for the 65 mph “landscaping,” as officers called it/Kathrine Nero, ABC 15.com. More here. (AP illustration)

Question: How do you explain this one?

CindyH: Attention Hucksters: Inspired by a love of Guinness, Bent and Me (not me, me but Huckster Me, if you know what I mean, oh dear…) have instigated a pre-St. Patrick’s day gathering tonight at 5:30, in Spokane, at O’Doherty’s, 525 West Spokane Falls Boulevard. Nothing like getting a jump on the celebration :-) Blurkers, bloggers and commenters are welcome. I may even try a Guinness myself. Maybe.

DFO: Hey, I’m 100% Portuguese. So I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s. Do you?

Darcy Pederson, left, takes a photograph of her husband, Ray, center, with Joe Vandal, the mascot of the Idaho Vandals during the first half of an NCAA women’s basketball game against Fresno State at the Western Athletic Conference tournament in Reno, Nev., Friday. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

• Haiti judge: New charge filed against U.S. missionary leader/Associated Press
• Boise State fires basketball coach Graham/Nick Jazierny, Statesman
• Reward offered for bald eagle killed near Long Lake/Spokesman-Review
• Nadine Woodward joins KXLY Monday morning/KXLY
• Judge suspends jail time for North Idaho woman/KXLY
• Another possible deadly meatball found in South Hill neighborhood/KREM2

US boxer Adam Richards, left, and Marco Huck from Germany, right, pose during the official weighing in Berlin, Germany earlier today, a day prior to their cruiserweight World Championship boxing fight. You write the cutline. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Top Cutlines:

• 1. Tony Berns and Dan Gookin engage in a stare-down over Gookin’s public records request.from the LCDC.
• 2. Two boxers brief-ly display the two-faced nature of their sport: on the one hand a loosely-gloved reference to sportsmanship and on the other hand Adam’s wish to simply get the Huck out of there — JohnA.
• 3. This photo was snapped just before the two wrestlers launched into a game of tonsil hockey, once again proving that wrestling (in its current professional formation with oil and speed-os) is not a heterosexual sport — Digger.
• HM: Arch Druid