Shawn Vestal

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Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Idaho’s McGeachin did the dancing – she ought to pay the fiddler

Sun., Jan. 30, 2022

If you want to dance all night, you have to pay the fiddler.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: We can’t patch the cracks in the housing system with short-term fixes

Fri., Jan. 28, 2022

Five hundred thousand.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: It’s a failure of simple courtesy, not crackpot beliefs, that cost Stockton his tickets

UPDATED: Tue., Jan. 25, 2022

John Stockton didn’t lose his seats at the McCarthey Athletic Center because he believes a lot of utter balderdash about COVID-19 and vaccines.

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News >  Health

Shawn Vestal: No room in the ICU for Idaho woman who dies in ER

Sun., Jan. 23, 2022

It was a Thursday night, Jan. 6, when Katherine Jane Ripley showed up in the emergency room at Moscow’s Gritman Medical Center.

News >  Religion

Shawn Vestal: Local World Relief leader steps down following refugee organization’s hiring controversy over gay job candidate

Fri., Jan. 21, 2022

The leader of World Relief Spokane, Mark Finney, has resigned following weeks of turmoil in the local office after a gay job candidate’s hiring was rejected by the national office.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Viral ‘internment camp’ conspiracy climbs to the top of Misinformation Mountain

UPDATED: Wed., Jan. 19, 2022

“If true,” read the headline to post on an online forum, “would this be your line in the sand?”

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Inslee’s right about the disease, but wrong about the cure

UPDATED: Fri., Jan. 14, 2022

Marilou Rickert did not set Washington politics on fire when she ran for the Legislature in 2003.

News

Shawn Vestal: Concerns over rejection of gay job candidate stirs World Relief

Sun., Jan. 9, 2022

As scores of refugees from Afghanistan have begun arriving in Spokane, a controversy has roiled the local office of World Relief, the organization that resettles them here – causing some people to leave the organization and supporters to rethink financial contributions.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Redoubt figure and Idaho legislative candidate faces rape, molestation charges

Fri., Jan. 7, 2022

As we mark the anniversary of a day when unhinged, violent talk turned into unhinged, violent action, it’s worth an update on North Idaho’s “Bard of the American Redoubt” – Alex Barron.

News

Shawn Vestal: A jumble of numbers obscures the need on the street

Wed., Jan. 5, 2022

Hundreds of people have filled the homeless shelter the city hastily threw together at the convention center to prevent people from dying on the streets in the latest deep freeze.

News

Shawn Vestal: Researchers forecast a hard-to-imagine West – one without snow

Sun., Dec. 26, 2021

If you ever lived on a farm, or in a farming community, the idea of praying for snow won’t be unfamiliar to you.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Medical journal decks the halls with silly science for the season

Fri., Dec. 24, 2021

As we come to the close of a year that left a lot of us short on “comfort, sparkle and space to imagine a better future,” we might turn to an unusual place for a little holiday cheer.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: A brutal year on the streets for those who died without a place to live

UPDATED: Tue., Dec. 21, 2021

It seemed as if the list of names would not end.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The anti-Rodgers pays the cost of courage in modern GOP

Sun., Dec. 19, 2021

Ever since Liz Cheney outmaneuvered Cathy McMorris Rodgers for her spot in House leadership a few years back, the Wyoming Republican has served as a kind of opposite number to the congressional representation we have here.

News

Shawn Vestal: Bell ringers in short supply as the holiday approaches

Fri., Dec. 17, 2021

The late-morning temperature had barely crept above freezing, but Mikel Gates was keeping things warm at his red kettle outside Fred Meyer.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Facing more sports debt, EWU considers drawing on scholarship fund

Wed., Dec. 15, 2021

Right now, Eastern Washington University has a million bucks left in a fund intended to help students pay tuition.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Gun-industry heretic details how firearm politics poisoned all politics

Tue., Dec. 7, 2021

Tuesday morning, Ryan Busse and I talked about his new book, “Gunfight,” which details his evolution from gun salesman to gun-industry heretic and which blasts the NRA for poisoning our politics.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: In the midst of a homeless crisis, city ignores millions for possible solution

Sun., Dec. 5, 2021

The state handed out millions of dollars in September to help communities quickly buy and stand up homeless shelters and affordable housing to offset the housing emergency.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Professor’s contempt for women is no fit for the classroom

Wed., Dec. 1, 2021

Last year’s critical race theory freakout in Idaho, which resulted in a defund-the-academy movement in the state Legislature, was sustained in part by a single professor at Boise State University.

News

Shawn Vestal: New book tells the many stories of the Community Building project

Sun., Nov. 28, 2021

Rebecca Mack was working as a reporter in the late 1990s when she heard about a local public defender who’d inherited a lot of money and was going to invest it in buildings on the first western block of Main Street.

News

Shawn Vestal: A long life, some ups and downs, and gratitude all the way

Thu., Nov. 25, 2021

The card showed up long before Thanksgiving was on the mind of most people.

News

Shawn Vestal: Bill Morlin, a legendary hard-nosed journalist – and kind of a sweetheart, too

UPDATED: Mon., Nov. 22, 2021

Morlin died late Saturday, following a brief, brutal illness. Among journalists and readers, his passing is monumental – the loss of a committed, unrelenting reporter, second-to-none at rooting out cancerous secrets, whose career stretched from the days when this was a two-newspaper town to an era when most of the freelance work he did in retirement appeared online.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Jail data shows that rates of re-offense didn’t change with more releases

Sun., Nov. 21, 2021

Early in the pandemic, as the county slashed the number of people being held in jail, some saw the possibility of a real-time experiment: Can we safely and effectively lower the number of people incarcerated at such great expense and with such dubious effectiveness?

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Loophole gives commission the chance to do its worst on health board

Fri., Nov. 19, 2021

It has been beyond obvious a change in the governance of the health district was needed.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The ranking of elementary schools takes a bad idea and makes it worse

UPDATED: Wed., Nov. 17, 2021

The annual rankings of colleges and universities by U.S. News & World Report has been a longstanding part of higher education in America – like a chronic illness.