And another thing …

Home sweet home. In the closing days of the Coeur d’Alene City Council elections, some Kootenai County Republicans funded four ads attacking eventual council winner Mike Kennedy for rooming with a friend during the campaign to get around the residency requirement.

Kennedy had been waiting in vain for his home to be built within the city limits since early in the year. But the Republicans were more interested in the race, and spending hundreds of dollars to defeat him, due to his status as one of the community’s leading Democrats. After Kennedy coasted to an easy plurality win in his three-way, nonpartisan race against two Republicans, some Republican leaders hinted darkly about appealing his win, based on the residency requirement. Now that the deadline for appealing the election has passed, one of them, Lee Shellman, has said he would like the Legislature to clarify the residency rule.

Kootenai County Republicans looked small and foolish in their attempt to defeat Kennedy. They’d be wise to drop the issue now before they look worse.

Positively dopey behavior. In a TV drama they’d call it “circumstantial evidence.” In the track and field world, they call it a “non-analytical positive.”

Either way, it was strong enough for the Court of Arbitration for Sport to ban two American sprinters from competition for two years. The two — sprinters Tim Montgomery and Chryste Gaines — both are connected with the BALCO steroid scandal. The CAS had no positive lab tests to confirm that Montgomery and Gaines had been doping, but they gathered other evidence, including a witness who said Montgomery had admitted it in a conversation with another athlete.

“Finally,” said Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which pressed the case against Montgomery and Gaines, “a stake has been driven through the heart of the preposterous argument that you have to have a doping infraction by producing an analytical positive doping test.”

Besides the two-year ban — which prompted Montgomery to retire from track — he had his world 100-meter record withdrawn. Imagine the impact consequences like those might have if pros like baseball star Rafael Palmeiro were treated as sternly as amateurs.