Stories by Shawn Vestal for the Spokesman-Review

Opinion > Column

Our Pandemic Life: The most dreadful year drags on

UPDATED: Fri., Dec. 11, 2020

Calpurnia pleaded with Caesar not to go to the Senate on that fateful March day.

News

Shawn Vestal: Another winter arrives before the shelter’s ready

Sun., Nov. 1, 2020

Another winter has arrived and with it, another game of catch-up in sheltering the homeless.

News

Shawn Vestal: There’s no excuse for the silence of these ‘leaders’ on Lutz

UPDATED: Fri., Oct. 30, 2020

“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”

Opinion > Column

Shawn Vestal: ‘Panhandle Board of Death’ is more appropriate

UPDATED: Fri., Oct. 30, 2020

It’s time to rename the Panhandle Board of Health.

Opinion > Column

Shawn Vestal: I didn’t like that endorsement either, but I hope you’ll stick with the paper

UPDATED: Mon., Oct. 26, 2020

Occasionally, I will write something so outrageously offensive to some readers that they reach out to let me know they are canceling their subscriptions.

News

Shawn Vestal: Walter stayed — and helped his hometown literary scene flourish

UPDATED: Sun., Oct. 25, 2020

When Maya Zeller was beginning her graduate work as a poetry student in Eastern Washington University’s MFA program in 2005, she attended a student reading where she saw Jess Walter in the crowd.

Opinion > Column

Shawn Vestal: Report details ugly marriage between anti-mask protests and the radical right

UPDATED: Thu., Oct. 22, 2020

On July 17, a group of about 30 anti-maskers gathered on the sidewalk outside the home of our county’s public health officer, Dr. Bob Lutz.

Opinion > Column

Shawn Vestal: Silence becomes the new style of denial on climate

Wed., Oct. 21, 2020

Do you believe global warming is happening?

News > Crime/Public Safety

Shawn Vestal: Another arrest and a stubborn question: How can the system handle Dennis Sprayberry?

UPDATED: Mon., Oct. 19, 2020

On a hot June night in 2016, something woke Anne Walter from her sleep.

News

Shawn Vestal: A long fall, but a soft landing, for EWU’s former president

Fri., Oct. 9, 2020

In a moment when thousands of Spokane County residents have lost their jobs – and with cuts looming at Eastern Washington University – the wildly prosperous failure of former EWU President Mary Cullinan is a strange story, indeed.

News

Shawn Vestal: Tax cops chase the poor and all but ignore the rich, because it’s easier

Wed., Oct. 7, 2020

Every year, tax dodgers and cheats cost the U.S. Treasury more than $381 billion, according to one estimate.

Opinion > Column

Shawn Vestal: The time has come at last for a name change on Fort George Wright Drive

Sun., Oct. 4, 2020

Margo Hill has been attending the Life Center Church with her family for years.

News

Shawn Vestal: Again and again, our congresswoman tells us to ignore the tiny ‘man’ behind the curtain

Fri., Oct. 2, 2020

At any moment now, I expect our congresswoman, the avatar of civility in American politics, to issue a condemnation of Tuesday night’s debate.

News

Shawn Vestal: Among the costs of the pandemic, a loss of human contact

Wed., Sept. 30, 2020

We were sitting on my back deck, drinks in hand, 6 feet apart, when one of my best friends told me: He and his wife were having a baby!

News

Shawn Vestal: Police watch as another Planned Parenthood ‘church’ protest flouts the law

UPDATED: Tue., Oct. 20, 2020

After a judge's order this week barring protesters from disrupting services provided at the Planned Parenthood clinic in North Spokane, the Church at Planned Parenthood showed up and seemingly violated the order, anyway. It's another example of the Spokane Police Department not taking action to disperse the crowd, despite the ruling and action from city lawmakers.

News

Shawn Vestal: Bar association brings discussion of racial justice to community

Fri., Sept. 25, 2020

In the mind of Francis Adewale, it’s past time to stop debating whether we need to accept the fact that there is systemic racism in the justice system, or making semantic arguments against trying to achieve equity in the legal system.

News

Shawn Vestal: Falsehoods spread right along with the fires, from people who should know better

Wed., Sept. 23, 2020

It is a sign of the terrible times that even as the wildfires screamed across the West, another blaze was burning – a conflagration of conspiracies.

News > WA Government

Shawn Vestal: Author explores the web of history and race tied to 2013 Spokane killing

Sun., Sept. 20, 2020

A lot of us remember the case chiefly as one of the most unusual crimes in Spokane – a murder for hire on the South Hill, solved by investigators following the pathways laid down by the discovery of the killer’s dropped glove.

News

Shawn Vestal: Smoke gets in your eyes, and throat, and lungs, and heart…

Fri., Sept. 18, 2020

Breathing all this smoke is similar, in some ways, to contracting a virus.

News

Shawn Vestal: Sturgis research called for greater skepticism

Wed., Sept. 16, 2020

I wrote a column last week about a research paper that estimated the Sturgis (South Dakota) motorcycle rally had been a massive COVID-19 superspreader event.

Opinion > Column

Shawn Vestal: Two months later, the sheriff doubles down - and picks fights - over antifa narrative

Sun., Sept. 13, 2020

Knezovich remains devoted to this explanation though it has not, so far, been buttressed by the public evidence. It has prompted a measure of skepticism and scoffing that was ramped up during a recent dispute over his agency’s arrest, at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, of a local Democratic Socialist activist on a seven-year-old warrant from another county.