Column

The first one’s free. It’s the oldest trick in the drug pusher handbook. And the tactic works just as well for the irresistible caramels John Linstrum makes and peddles to the area’s sweet-toothed masses.

Wearing their Zags on their sleeves.

I am always attracted to interesting words and anticipate at year’s end the annual listing of the words of the year. Not so much this time around.

It’s a sad sign of our mollycoddled age. Too many people have been swaddled and softened in echo chambers of approval. Too many have been made to feel entitled and special and deserving of adulation – “snowflakes,” if you will. A lot of them have been scrambling away lately from the scrum of public debate, seeking out “safe spaces” where they are protected from the “violence” of attitudes that conflict with theirs.

Believe it or not, liver and onions is a popular dish at Rustler's Roost in Hayden. Restaurant owner Woody McEvers says he has customers drop in for the meal on a regular basis. Often, one half of the couple likes liver and onions. And the other doesn’t – and doesn’t want the cooking process to stink up the house. It’s a dish that's hard to beat for $7.50. But many would take a pass on liver and onions, if it was given away free.

I all but coughed up my toast and coffee Sunday morning when I read about the sheriff having to give up his gat at the Arena Saturday night. We really are living in an age of nincompoops.

It’s a hard knock life for those who live with the obsessed.

It’s the mantra of the floral business: ABC, always be closing.

State Rep. Matt Shea, R-Pluto, and a few other jokers would chop Washington in half and turn the East Side slice of the pizza into a new 51st state. Liberty, they want to call it.

What if you’re on a two-lane road, and you want to pass another motorist who’s going a couple of miles below the speed limit, but just to get past them safely, you need to exceed the speed limit? Idaho Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, has an answer for that.

The Michigan-raised team is a bunch of runts.

Romantic gestures leave us feeling green with envy.

Contractor Kevin Serr of Compass Construction, a disaster restoration business, usually doesn’t receive a resume scribbled on the back of a Keystone Light beer box that once held 12 cans of 12 fluid ounces. But he did this week. From a fellow named Ken. And the Spokane contractor was intrigued enough by the unusual job application to give the man a second look.

When the president met with law enforcement officials this week, what made news was his flip comment that he might “destroy” a state senator’s career. What got less attention was the nature of the proposal being discussed: A sheriff was complaining about a bill to limit the government’s ability to seize and keep the cars, homes and other property of criminal suspects who have not been convicted of a crime.

We’ll wash that “R” right out of here.

Tuesday afternoon found me seeking inner peace and tranquility in a North Side strip mall, a Frisbee toss from a Red Lobster franchise. I naturally would have preferred a one-on-one with the Dalai Lama himself. Although getting to Tibet appears so exhausting and arduous that the logistics, I fear, would defeat the purpose.

No lying, he’s never been artificial with me.

Like most Seahawks fans we rooted hard for the Atlanta Falcons during the Super Bowl on Sunday. Birds of a feather flocking together, united in Tom Brady disdain. Well, we all know how that turned out.

How journalists fare in a world of fake news.