Shawn Vestal

Orrin Gorman McClellan took his own life following an extended battle with the wounds that so many warriors bring home with them – post-traumatic stress disorder, likely traumatic brain injury, hearing loss, compression injuries, and system-wide trauma through the body that he couldn’t quiet or control.

Hotter, drier, smokier summers. More rain and less snow in the winters. Droughts, overflowing rivers and coastal surges. Sunburned apples and softer berries. More heatstroke and Lyme disease. Less skiing and boating, more respiratory problems, suffering fisheries. That’s what’s in store for the Northwest, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

It’s been a sea-to-shining-sea year for our peripatetic governor.

The abundance and ease of the average American life in 2018 is a marvel, and it’s surpassingly easy to simply list the reasons we have to be thankful. But isn’t there more to it than that – than being glad we’ve got love in our lives along with nice things and happy moments?

TV news veteran Don Harris had covered Saigon in the final days of the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War in the Middle East, and he liked to be prepared. But neither he nor his son, Jeff Humphrey, nor the rest of the family were that concerned about an assignment to Jonestown, Guyana.

Scratch the surface of a “constitutionalist” – at least one of the Western anti-government variety – and what you often find underneath is an authoritarian. Or an anarchist.

The Spokane Public Schools board should heed the wishes of voters who rejected building an outdoor stadium in downtown Spokane.

The temperatures had just peaked above 40 degrees on Wednesday, boosted by the bright sun.

It wasn’t a wave, it was the tide. The regular, recurrent tide.

In almost every way, the hotly contested race between Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and challenger Lisa Brown has been a more positive, more passionate and less cynical electoral exercise than our current moment would give us the right to expect.

Corporations are “speaking” louder than any other entity in this election by spending tens of millions of dollars on statewide initiatives.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ voting record shows clearly where she has stood on protecting those who have pre-existing conditions. But it doesn’t seem to be the record she thinks she has.

Avista Corp. gives a lot of money to local candidates. If it leans in any political direction, it is toward incumbency – toward those already in power. But Avista’s recent decision to spend $200,000 to signal-boost the candidacies of French and Kuney with TV ads is a dramatic, puzzling departure from business as usual.

Another year, another victory for Washington in the race for the most regressive tax system in the nation, and another question for Halloween: Who’s afraid of the income tax?

Glen Morgan, a conservative gadfly from Olympia who paints himself as a transparency activist, has produced a series of incredibly dishonest mailers intended to trick Democrats into writing in other candidates – an effort to drain away liberal votes to benefit Republican candidates.

In Montana, the president’s stream of rhetoric was the manipulative, conspiratorial story of “the caravan,” and what it reveals about the Trump movement. His caravan tale – and the manner in which it was peddled to those prepared to believe it by distortion in right-wing echo chambers – drew on every tool in the propagandists’ playbook, from racist dog-whistling to conspiratorial insinuations to the demonization of political opponents to whispers, winks and nods.

The first rule of attending a Trump tent revival is the same as with any big jamboree, whether it’s Sasquatch or a Franklin Graham rally: Get there early.

A lot has changed in the half-century since Elmer Dixon and his brother founded the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers, but the key issues that motivate him remain essentially the same: equality, poverty, health care, housing, economic justice, police brutality.

How deep is the state? The deep, deep, perniciously deep state? Deeper than you might guess.

It’s the hardest thing for any of us to hear, let alone believe: You just ain’t that special.

The death penalty has had a long, troubled life in Washington, serving vengeance more than justice. It’s already on life support from a gubernatorial moratorium, and it’s time to let it perish.

I don’t know Ric Gendron at all. You may not either. But in a vivid way, we know him through his gift to us – his paintings.

Following a widespread review of military decorations in the post-9/11 years, Ronald Shurer II was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest honor for military valor.

Marv Hagedorn would have you believe that he took to Twitter the other day in order to pose an important question about sexual assault: “When is it too late to speak up?”