Eye’d really like to be like Mike’s

Keith Erickson and I swapped tales online about Mike Anderson following the ex-Kootenai County commissioner’s unexpected death this month. Keith remembers how Mike walked out with him after Keith questioned the appropriateness of an executive session called by the two Republican commissioners in the early ‘90s. Moi? I recall Mike’s incredible eyesight. In his unsuccessful re-election bid (1994), Mike’s residency was an issue. Rumors had it that he wasn’t living in his commission district. So late one night, I decided to verify his residence. I found a pickup with Anderson signs on both sides in the alley behind his house, drove around front to double check the address, and then went home, satisfied. As I walked through the door, the phone rang. Mike was on the line. He wanted to know why I was sneaking around his house. Mike, a former cop, had run my license plate number through the police network. I couldn’t believe he could make out my plates from that distance. Good guy. He’ll be missed.

We (Heart) Hart?

My blog readers know that Republican precinct committeemen Duane Rasmussen (No. 19) and Fred Meckel (No. 9) are in trouble with the junta now leading county Repubs for refusing to distribute Phil Hart literature door-to-door. Both men ran unsuccessfully for the House District 3 post won by Vito Barbieri. Rasmussen, a Pachyderm Club official, and Meckel, a Rathdrum councilman, balked at circulating Hart literature with other GOP material on moral grounds. Both think Hart is a tax cheat and a timber thief (despite the belated partial payment for wood the legislator stole from state endowment lands back when). However, state GOP leader Norm Semanko pronounced from on high in a letter to local GOP Chairman Tina Jacobson, who’s a major Hart fan, that they and state committeeman Matt Roetter are to support Hart (in his race with write-in Howard Griffiths) or step aside. Which might make sense at myopic Republican HQ. But has the rest of us scratching our heads.

Phil Hart’s ‘Trees’

Hucks Online commenter JohnA channels Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” in dedicating the following to Rep. Phil Hart and his faithful followers: “I think that I shall never see/A home as lovely as a tree./A tree whose hungry mouth is prest/Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;/A tree that looks at God all day,/And lifts her leafy arms to pray;/A tree that may in summer wear/A nest of robins in her hair;/Upon whose bosom snow has lain;/Who intimately lives with rain./Homes are made by fools like me,/But only Hart can steal a tree.

Huckleberries

Debbie Berger’s still chuckling about her 84-year-old neighbor’s small mound of pine needles with a hand-painted sign sprouting from the middle: “Free pine needles: You haul” … Repub Cliff Hayes cracked the best joke during the League of Women Voters televised debate recently when he noted that he was proud that four of his five children had college degrees. But he was prouder still that none of them have ever been on the wrong side of jail bars. Cliff, of course, is the former, long-time police chief in Post Falls and is challenging Dem County Clerk Dan English … Hucks Online poll: Incumbent Christie Wood (161 votes) and Ken Howard (141) were the leading getters of 511 votes cast in the straw poll for North Idaho College trustees. The ticket of Robert Ketchum (106) and Ron Nilson (104) finished behind them … After Kerri Thoreson posted Commish Todd Tondee shirtless at the Great Wall of China with a female entourage from the Coeur d’Alene chamber (as a result of light packing & inability to buy more clothes during trip), one of my blog wags commented: “Please, no more man boobs.” Doesn’t Seinfeld call that “moobs”?

Parting Shot

At North Idaho College, Joe Jacoby was surprised as anyone that his production of “The Laramie Project” would attract the likes of Fred Phelps & his gang of Westboro Baptist Church hatemongers from Topeka, Kan. Quoth from NIC Sentinel: “We had hardly even started publicity. How we managed to land on their radar was my first biggest question. We’re in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, pretty well off the beaten path. We’re a two-year school. I was sure this was not going to fall on their radar, but somehow they did.” Now Joe knows how the families of fallen soldiers feel.