Ruby Ridge Climbs To Top Of News Story List
A fertilizer bomb ripped through an Oklahoma City office building, the FBI suspended four agents and an Idaho white separatist’s family received a $3.1 million settlement from the U.S. government.
Those incidents thrust the name Randy Weaver into the national spotlight again this year.
During a survey this month, readers and staff members of The Idaho Spokesman-Review chose continuing fallout from the 1992 siege at Weaver’s Ruby Ridge cabin as the top local story of 1995.
“Weaver became a pretty powerful symbol nationwide,” said reader Bill Connolly. “It was a local story that had enough impact it resulted in U.S. Senate hearings and could lead to the dismantling of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.”
Weaver, who now lives in Iowa, also played a role in survey participants’ choices for the second and third biggest stories of the year: The militia movement and U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho.
Many Inland Northwest residents invoked Weaver’s name as reason for their role in an anti-government revolt that ranged from tax protesters to armed militias. Firebrand freshman Congressman Chenoweth was among a handful of politicians who championed their cause in calling for public hearings of the Weaver siege.
“I felt Helen Chenoweth missed the point and was unfair to the federal government,” said Coeur d’Alene reader Daniel Rix. “The federal government makes mistakes - like any big corporation - but that’s no reason to support anti-government splinter groups.”
While condemning violent acts, Chenoweth earned criticism for refusing to condemn militia groups. She made news with anti-federal rhetoric, a controversial $40,000 unsecured campaign loan from a bank and a call to give public lands to the states.
“That’s absurd,” Rix said. “We (Idahoans) don’t have the money to manage them.”
Readers and staff members also pointed to a pair of annual events - flooding and grass burning - as some of the year’s most important issues.
The St. Joe and Coeur d’Alene rivers flooded twice this year, and warm weather and early winter rains washed out roads in record numbers. Bluegrass farmers’ late summer field burning prompted a record number of complaints, and drew attention from legislators in Washington and Idaho.
“Grass burning affects us all,” said Connolly.
Readers also named vigilante Ken Arrasmith’s murder trial as a top story. The former Washington sheriff’s deputy shot Ron and Luella Bingham, whom he said sexually assaulted his daughter.
“It made me think of Bernard Goetz,” Connolly said, referring to the East Coast man who shot four teenagers on a New York subway in 1984 after they asked him for money.
Arrasmith’s was convicted of one count of first-degree murder and one of second-degree murder after prosecutors detailed his involvement in a drug deal just before the killings.
, DataTimes