Nader qualifies for ballot
BOISE – There are five candidates on the ballot for president in Idaho – not just the two everyone’s hearing the most about from the major parties.
This past week, Ralph Nader qualified for the Idaho ballot as an independent, after his supporters turned in nearly 7,000 certified signatures to the Idaho secretary of state. Nader got less than 1 percent of the Idaho vote running as a write-in four years ago, but now he’s a named candidate. Nationally, Nader’s gotten on the ballot in 38 states and is shooting for 45.
Other presidential candidates on Idaho’s ballot: John McCain, Republican, and Barack Obama, Democrat, of course. There’s also Chuck Baldwin of Grand Rapids, Mich., of the Constitution Party; and Bob Barr of Smyrna, Ga., the Libertarian candidate.
GOP wants Rammell off ballot
The Idaho Republican Party has joined a group of 10 individuals who are suing in the Idaho Supreme Court trying to kick independent candidate Rex Rammell off the ballot for Idaho’s open U.S. Senate seat. The group hired private investigators to track down allegedly improper signatures on Rammell’s petitions to qualify as a candidate, and the party says he’s improperly portraying himself as a Republican when he’s running as an independent.
Rammell reacted angrily this week, calling a press conference in which he called the lawsuit “reprehensible” and blaming Republican rival Jim Risch, whose campaign said he wasn’t involved.
Boise mourns after fire claims life, homes
A raging fire ripped through a Southeast Boise neighborhood on Monday evening, pushed by a sudden and fierce windstorm, and destroyed nine homes, damaged 10 others, and left one woman dead, Mary Ellen Ryder, a popular Boise State University professor who had twice survived breast cancer. Her body was recovered the next morning from the ruins of her burned home.
“Words seem immensely inadequate at a time like this,” state Board of Education President Milford Terrell said of the professor’s death. “The board extends our deepest and most heartfelt sympathies to the Ryder family at this time. It is difficult to imagine what they must be going through, but our hearts and prayers are with them, as well as with Mary Ellen’s colleagues and friends at Boise State.”
Dozens of families fled their homes as the fire raged across a field and into a long-established Boise neighborhood; more than a dozen firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation or minor injuries. The fire moved so quickly that residents said homes were exploding like they were full of gasoline; the blaze was visible from all over town.
Though the Boise area is accustomed to grass fires burning on the dry hills at the edge of town and sometimes destroying an outlying home, it’s rare for a fire to rip through a neighborhood in the city like this.
Former astronaut now BSU prof
Barbara Morgan, the Idaho teacher who became a space shuttle astronaut, started work this week at Boise State University as a professor, teaching in the colleges of engineering and education.
BSU President Bob Kustra hailed Morgan as “a major prize” for the university, and said her work will help boost efforts to improve science, technology, engineering and math instruction at the school.