Shawn Vestal

How much water was involved in America’s waterboarding of terrorism suspects? If that sounds glib, it’s not meant to be. As the massive and much-battled-over “torture report” by a Senate committee inches toward public disclosure, a British newspaper is reporting that the waterboarding employed against three top al-Qaida suspects far exceeds the widespread understanding of what happened. It is the latest trickle from the iceberg surrounding that report, all of which suggest that the torture program was even worse than it was thought to be – that the tactics were harsher and the results negligible, and that the CIA misled a lot of people about it.

Call it the marijuana gap. Men and women may respond differently to the effects of pot’s active ingredient, THC, according to new research by a Washington State University professor. In experiments on lab rats, females were more sensitive to the pain-relieving qualities of the drug, but quicker to develop a tolerance to it than the males. Other studies have suggested that females are more susceptible to negative effects of the drugs and experience less of an increase in appetite.

Interesting times for local government and picture-taking: Some Spokane police officers have started wearing body cameras to record their interactions with the public, and a city vehicle has been outfitted with license-plate-reading technology, allowing it to prowl the streets for ticket scofflaws and overtime parkers. In both cases the public’s voice has so far not been sought. In particular, there have been criticisms of the Spokane Police Department’s decisions to go forward with a test phase of the body cameras without more public input beforehand. This is a tempting framework through which to view the situation: Efforts at accountability and reform should proceed with as much public oversight and contribution as possible.

Parents have been charged with crimes for leaving their kids in fatally hot cars. They’ve been charged for failing to get medical care for children. For leaving kids unattended to die in fires or drown. For failing to put their kids in their car seats.

We were invited to leave our school this month. Our school, it seems, has not made “adequate yearly progress” on standardized tests. Our school, it turns out, is “in School Improvement.”

So, just to be clear: The prosecutor who was buddying up to a criminal – a criminal with the word “Criminal” tattooed on his forehead – turns out to be the one who dismissed felony charges against a reputed Hell’s Angel in order to cover up the internal investigation of a police officer who was hooking up with a criminal. The cop’s still on the job, slapped gently on the wrist. The prosecutor’s on paid leave, pending an investigation. And the supposed Hell’s Angel? The one who once led police on a chase through West Central? The one police considered so dangerous they called out the SWAT team to arrest him?

If there is any food more estranged from this culinary moment than the corn dog, it would be hard to find. The corn dog is not local and organic. It is not, usually, hand-crafted and artisanal. There is nothing farm-to-table about the corn dog – though there’s plenty that is nose-to-tail – and you absolutely should not sprinkle it with a chili salt or drizzle it with an infused oil. Salty, greasy, fried, processed, packaged, cheap, convenient, probably carcinogenic: the corn dog is the archenemy of the superfood.

When cops shoot human beings, they are named publicly within days. This is as it should be. We grant police officers extraordinary authority, not the least of which is the right to carry and use guns. When they do so, the level of public scrutiny should be high and early. Even as larger questions are investigated, the initial facts should come out early – not late and after a bunch of massaging – and the process of evaluating those facts should, as much as possible, unfold in a manner that the public can examine.

Just stop giving them money. I know you like to. I know it makes you feel good. I get it – when you give them money, you feel like a better person, the kind of person who is contributing to making the world a better place.

If you’re under the impression that you’re seeing a remarkable amount of construction around Spokane – from cranes on the skyline to the peals of hammers in neighborhoods – you’re not wrong. Last year, the city of Spokane set a record for the dollar value of the building permits issued at $538 million. Even if you take Walt Worthy’s downtown hotel out of the equation – permitted at a value of $135 million – 2013 was a genuine boom year for people deciding to invest in construction in Spokane, surpassing the value of building permits issued in Boise and Tacoma.

I would like to extend a heartfelt thank-you to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers for – when taking to the lectern last week as the GOP’s woman-in-chief – not calling her proposed legislation a “war.” Of course, the dude standing next to her did. The House GOP, said Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado in trying to rebut the Democrats’ “war on women” thing, will now wage a “war for women.”

As the downtown business illuminati attempt to derail eight years’ worth of planning for improved bus service in Spokane, they insist that it’s not because they don’t like poor people. They insist it’s not because they don’t like public transportation. They insist they just want a chance to offer opinions and suggestions, since the preceding weeks and months and years of chances to offer opinions and suggestions have been so insufficient.

It sometimes seems that – in the realms where concerns about poverty and childhood are taken seriously – the news is always bad. This is not because the news is always bad, however. And sometimes, in the push to address very real problems, underlying improvements go unseen. When that happens, the crisis mindset can begin to seem false or incomplete, eroding the very belief that we need, as a society, to try to address these problems to improve the lives of poor children.

Why did the Coeur d’Alene Tribe cancel the concert of super-bigot and hack rocker Ted Nugent? Because the left hates guns.

Did you know Matt Shea was an Oath Keeper? Did you know he likes to sit around with other Oath Keepers – self-declared patriots and apocalyptic prophets – and check out night-vision goggles and talk about guns?

One obituary is a portrait of a person. Several add up to a portrait of a community. Recent obituaries published in The Spokesman-Review tell a story of nuns and war veterans, coaches and expert bowlers. Here are a few of them:

Anthony Gill wasn’t even in Spokane when the idea hit him: What if we did something with the war-zone pit of destruction that is now the gateway to Spokane for freeway travelers getting off at Division and Third? Something that not only hid the rubble, but added something creative and artistic? Something even … attractive?

Doctor shortages in the optometry services have been the primary reason for longer-than-usual wait lists at Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center this summer, and none of the waits has involved urgent care, a top hospital official said Tuesday. The hospital is acting quickly to move veterans off that list, aided in part by the hiring of an optometrist and in part by a new initiative that allows more patients to be seen by community providers if they can’t be scheduled quickly at the VA, said Nancy Benton, associate director of patient care.

Among the many ways in which gun extremists are holding the country hostage is the 18-year blackout on federal funding for research into gun violence. But if Congress can’t take the most reasonable, the most sane, the most obvious of baby steps – merely studying gun violence, say, or closing the gaping gun show loophole – then maybe there’s another source of sanity out there.

Why does the Spokane VA hospital have one of the longest waiting lists in the nation? Why does it have one of the country’s longest-of-the-longest waiting lists – new patients who can’t be scheduled within 120 days?

Potheads, your 15 minutes are about over. TV cameras will not trail you much longer. Newspaper columnists will stop seeking your comments. Tie-dye and Jamaican dreadlock covers will fade from the media spotlight. We will all – I promise – eventually stop making lame jokes about Doritos and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”