Column

Given the on-and-off announcements about various prospective Trump appointees in recent days, it’s with some hesitance that I pass along this maybe-news: Idaho Gov. Butch Otter now is supposedly among the candidates being vetted for secretary of agriculture.

Peace on earth and jazzy sports coats for all.

You can pretty much tell where someone stands on virtually every social issue from his or her attitude about married women not using their husband’s last name.

It was a chilly way to spend the spring. Von Walden, an engineering professor at Washington State University, worked for about a month on a ship in the Arctic in May and June of 2015. Every morning he’d get up, put on his “flotation suit” – a heavy snowsuit with a life preserver built in – and head down the gangplank.

People are more easily trained than cats.

Dazzled, I gazed at the 7-foot pine trimmed with glittering lights that switched from colored to white with the flip of a switch.

You may not have heard much about this – since it didn’t involve a football player and a state senator braying at the regents – but there was an appeals court ruling this month that ordered colleges and universities in Washington to do a better job allowing students to defend themselves in expulsion cases.

The Zags will join the Marmot Lodge for an epic three-on-three tournament.

I don’t have ready access to young children to whom I might offer the classic Christmas gift warning – “You’ll shoot your eye out.” As I’m sure parents and grandparents can imagine, this leaves a void in my celebration of the season.

Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo has again been selected by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to chair the Senate’s Committee on Committees, meaning he’ll lead negotiations about which senators get which committee assignments. This is the seventh consecutive two-year congressional term that Crapo’s been tapped for this role.

When you can't find the type of angel you want – a beautiful male with blond locks – you have to improvise, especially if you're digging through dolls at Coeur d'Alene thrift stores. Pat Kuhns finally found the right model to finish her home Nativity scene. But she had to turn to professional wrestler Chris Jericho for inspiration.

It’s amazing to get to work in one of the most iconic buildings in the Inland Northwest. But it’s even more amazing to be a part of one of the last great local newspapers in this nation.

Here’s why some of our friends and neighbors refuse to wear a hat when outside while it is snowing.

We’re all typically atypical.

I have a lot to be grateful for, and I know it. But I’m still surprisingly stuck in my sorrow over the election of a month ago. Never before has any election left me feeling the way this one has, depressed. I’ve been on the losing side of plenty of elections – I mean, being my age, that’s inevitable – but this one feels different, and the ability to just accept and move on eludes me.

Acting under the “miscellaneous items” portion of the Spokane County Commission agenda last Tuesday, the commission put a moratorium on outdoor marijuana farms, citing complaints they’d received about odor. The one person in attendance to be surprised by the move was a Spokesman-Review reporter. Though it was apparently a legal move, the vote smells worse than any barnyard in full flower.

Now that the West is won, maybe history matters.

When Elf U turned out to be a diploma mill, we were suspicious

The Idaho Senate had an unusual matter to deal with at its organizational session on Thursday: A formal contest of the election from an unsuccessful Senate candidate.