Shawn Vestal

Since 1973, 159 Americans have been exonerated following death-penalty convictions. Two of them shared their stories at Gonzaga University Wednesday night.

Should a parent who refuses to vaccinate their children be allowed to send them to school during a disease outbreak? Under a “parental rights” ordinance being floated by a Spokane Valley city councilman, the answer is: Sure!

WSU researcher Allan Pessier studied the fungus growing on the skin of frogs. His findings lead to a better understanding of why the world’s amphibians are dying off.

If you need a further reason to be appalled by the congressional health care travesty, consider the current “repeal and replace” proposal in terms of the Washington-Idaho border.

The 10th anniversary of Terrain is remarkable for many reasons. The annual downtown arts show has been a catalyst – maybe the catalyst – for renewed energy and creativity in Spokane. Terrain and its various offshoots have planted a garden that is blooming alongside a host of other developments: a booming downtown, rising neighborhoods, smart civic investments, a great food scene, a palpable rise in the unmeasurable but crucial quality of civic faith ...

Denis McCormick’s job is to monitor complaints about Denver police officers. When the department was getting ready to start wearing body cameras, he found out by reading about it in the newspaper. “It was all done by the chief,” he said. “There was no input from our office or the public prior to this going in.”

Trump administration’s retreat from police reform efforts leaves Spokane without a final grade on its yearslong changes regarding transparency, oversight and community relations.

Whatever your pet theory regarding school shootings, the events at Freeman High could satisfy it. Do you blame easy, continual access to guns? Check. Do you blame mental illness and a dearth of caretaking services? Check. Do you blame bullying? Check. Do you blame a violence-saturated culture of play violence? Check. Do you blame media coverage and the potential of a copycat effect? Check. Do you blame – with all the ease and comfort of hindsight – a failure to recognize and act on warning signs?

Parents filled the parking lot outside the high school, waiting for word, desperate for news. Texting furiously. Phones to their ears. Eyes wet, faces red. Hands over mouths. Some had heard from their children inside, and some had not.

Randall and Steven, and people like them, represent perhaps the toughest frontier in the effort to combat homelessness – people who, for a host of reasons, remain unhelped, unhoused, un-“fixed”.

Over the past few years, as Washington’s Legislature has deepened into intractability, some state lawmakers have occasionally tried to gloss over their difficulties by comparing themselves to their counterparts in Washington, D.C.

They called it a “free speech rally.” A better description of the gathering at WSU’s Glenn Terrell Mall might have been “Alt-Right Melodrama,” starring Washington’s most famous bigot bro: James Allsup.

Here’s your chance, Representative. If it hasn’t passed you by.

It is a simple, superior, satisfying food. But, for him, baking sourdough bread is not merely about eating it. Otherwise he’d just buy one of the excellent loaves at any number of excellent local bakeries.

Halfway through the last academic term, Rayanne was failing every one of her classes at Lewis and Clark High School. All six of them.

It looms over Monroe Street like a harbinger of things to come. It’s big. It’s bold. It’s dark – or at least the source of it is.

The man was sitting patiently, draped in a barber’s cape, as Derek Rice trimmed the hair above his ears. Asked his name, he replied, “My name is No.”

Four thousand dollars per student. That’s how much additional money is expected to flow the Spokane School District between next school year and 2020-21.

If you’re fearful about what might arise from an unstable, trigger-happy North Korea – to say nothing of how the current administration might handle it – you’re not alone.

Through a protective lens, the sun became a dense orange crescent. The sky dimmed strangely, as though a dome of shadow were filtering down. For a few seconds it seemed as if time had slipped its leash, set free by the combination of surreal natural phenomenon and intense anticipation.

A quarter-century after Ruby Ridge, the same fires burn. The same fault lines tremble beneath the same schisms.

Several communities throughout south-central Idaho are already seeing crowds, and are anticipating even more.

A column in last Saturday’s newspaper stated that transgender identity was neither normal or acceptable. That’s a lie. Or perhaps lie isn’t the right word – it’s probably not a lie if you believe it, no matter how false and hateful. But it’s as wrong as the day is long, and the idea that it’s Massey’s place to make this declaration, on behalf of God, to those of us who don’t attend his church, is wronger still.

In the ongoing trial of the two former Fairchild Air Force Base psychologists whose company earned more than $80 million to develop and carry out the enhanced-interrogation program, one slap is playing a big role.