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News

Shawn Vestal: Spokane Police ride-alongs raise concerns when used as council endorsement tool

UPDATED: Fri., Nov. 12, 2021

When Karen Kearney was invited to go on a ride-along with Spokane Police Officer Richie Plunkett as she was running for a seat on the Spokane City Council, she didn’t think anything of it.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: How body-cam footage tarring a council member made its way to Fox News

UPDATED: Sun., Nov. 7, 2021

It’s an awfully weak case.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: If money is speech, this election was a roar

Wed., Nov. 3, 2021

Realtors, big business and wealthy individuals poured hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited independent spending into supporting two candidates, Mike Lish and Jonathan Bingle, and attacking the other two, Zack Zappone and Naghmana Sherazi.

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Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: ‘Constitutionalist’ attorney takes up the cause of fired football coach

Sun., Oct. 31, 2021

The name of the attorney on the news release announcing the latest legal threat from the Good Ship Rolovich might ring a bell.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Somebody needs to protect NIC from its farcical board majority

Fri., Oct. 29, 2021

If John Owen was never president of North Idaho College, then no wrestling coach ever should be.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Another day, another shooting in a country sick with gun violence

Wed., Oct. 27, 2021

Three dead. Four injured.

News

Shawn Vestal: Tales from student immigrants in Spokane share their hardships and triumphs

Sun., Oct. 24, 2021

When Fedja Zahirovic fled with his family from the Bosnian War to Spokane in the 1990s, he was “confused and angry,” uprooted from all he’d ever known, and didn’t know the language or the culture.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Commissioners promise, honest they do, that new hire wasn’t cronyism

Fri., Oct. 22, 2021

Obviously, there is nothing fishy whatsoever about the county quietly hiring Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ brother two months ago for an important new job without advertising the position or considering other candidates.

Corrections

UPDATED: Wed., Oct. 20, 2021

Reilly tweeted ‘all Jews are dangerous’

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The next act for fired Rolovich could be anti-vaxxer hero

Wed., Oct. 20, 2021

Now we wait to see whether Bartleby the Scrimmager will expand upon his insistent but vague refusals.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: At the Supreme Court, the justices use the right word for torture

Sun., Oct. 17, 2021

When Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett referred last week to the actions devised and implemented by Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell on one of the most well-known of the long-term detainees in the War on Terror, she used a clear, simple, accurate word.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Kootenai County GOP gives thumbs-up to anti-Semitic carpetbagger

UPDATED: Wed., Oct. 20, 2021

What do you do when you hear that a dude who’s running for school board once claimed that it was a “mistake” to give women the right to vote or that women should not be allowed on social media?

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: In age of bully politics, school officials bear brunt of rage

Wed., Oct. 13, 2021

Debbie Long has been on the Central Valley School Board for 18 years.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Mayor’s new shelter budget is a just one step, but it’s promising

Sun., Oct. 10, 2021

The good news is that Mayor Nadine Woodward has proposed building a new emergency shelter to address the number of people living on the streets and the possibility that an already-dire problem could worsen.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Million-dollar salary for WSU’s Schulz not what it seems

Fri., Oct. 8, 2021

In a time of financial sacrifice and falling enrollments, the latest news about Washington State University President Kirk Schulz was bound to turn heads.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: We shouldn’t need mandates, but we do — vaccines are how we put out this fire

Wed., Oct. 6, 2021

Maybe public safety just isn’t their thing.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The surge of ‘mini-insurrections’ reflects evolving pandemic extremism

Sun., Oct. 3, 2021

The images from the anti-mask demonstration run amok last week in Coeur d’Alene were too familiar for comfort.

Opinion

Shawn Vestal: The Greyhound sweeps will end — three years after the strong mayor let them go on

UPDATED: Sat., Oct. 2, 2021

The end of discriminatory fishing expeditions at the bus station is good news if you like civil liberties – though, frankly, if you like civil liberties you’re also wondering what in the world took so long.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Redoubt realtor wants only right kind of buyers

UPDATED: Thu., Sept. 30, 2021

The dream of an exclusionary homeland for the far right in the Inland Northwest has had a long and sordid history.

News >  Crime/Public Safety

Shawn Vestal: Property crimes – an unfortunate hallmark of our civic identity – are steadily going down

UPDATED: Mon., Sept. 27, 2021

Comparing year-to-date Spokane Police Department crime reports on the same date for the past five years - Sept. 11 - shows a 37% drop in property crimes.

News

Shawn Vestal: Conventional wisdom on hiring crisis isn’t holding water

Fri., Sept. 24, 2021

As the sun sets on the expanded federal unemployment benefits, it’s interesting to note how the conventional wisdom about the effect of these extra payments has panned out.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Tales from the COVID units, told by WSU-trained nurses

Wed., Sept. 22, 2021

After 12-hour shifts as an ICU nurse at an Arizona hospital, Jody Lund hears the relentless sound of a ventilator as she tries to sleep.

News

Shawn Vestal: The problem is the pandemic, not the ‘divisiveness’ of public health

Sun., Sept. 19, 2021

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, who is fiddling like Nero as his state’s COVID-19 crisis rages, says he’s concerned that the president’s vaccine mandates will create “divisiveness.”

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Maybe Risch should have slept through this hearing too

UPDATED: Fri., Sept. 17, 2021

Jim Risch, if you recall, fell asleep for about 15 minutes during the first impeachment trial of the last president.

News

Shawn Vestal: Twenty years later, indelible memories of a grim day in Manhattan

UPDATED: Wed., Sept. 15, 2021

It was an earlier-than-usual morning on a perfect bluebird day.