Best of the Northwest
Welcome to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where our Lady Mayor (pictured) breaks up fights between homeowners and beachcombers on our public waterways here (high five to Brand X for the skewp), and a sheriff's wannabe sues the incumbent and gets thrown in jail in the process here. And I thought things were as dull as a national political convention around here.
1. David Horsey here and Milt Priggee (pictured) here doodle about Slick Willie & Lovestruck D's and the aging Baby Boom generation.
2. News Editor Ralph Bartholdt of the weekly St. Maries Gazette Record writes the first of a series of war dispatches from Iraq, where he's "vacationing" here, and Publisher Dan Hammes of the Gazette Record explains why the paper pitched in to help Ralph go to Iraq here.
3. Demo "super delegate" Tom Foley's 100 pound leaner than when he became the first House speaker since 1860 to lose a re-election bid, and he's hell-bent on making sure that Patti "Osama Mama" Murray beats George Nethercutt, the man who dethroned him, here.
4. Paul Girard, a bartender from Lacey, Wash., drove around with a lottery ticket worth $4.15 million in his back pocket for seven weeks before he decided to check it, according to The Olympian, here.
5. Wanna know how the other half lives? In Sun Valley, the 23rd annual Sun Valley Center Wine Auction raised $1 million. The Excel Foundation of Coeur d'Alene would have to sell all its ceramic moose and much more to reach that figure. Click here.
6. At Glacier National Park, the grizzly bear aren't the only danger to humans. Sometimes, their own carelessness can get them in trouble. The Daily Inter Lake tells of a man who's in critical condition after falling into a deep crevasse in the Grinnell Glacier here.
7. Ronald and Krista Torpey of the Plummer area have provided a home for 20 wild horses, according to Estar Holmes of the St. Maries Gazette Record here.
8. If you don't think Boy-C football has gone big time, check out the first name on its 2005 schedule: University of Georgia. The Idaho Statesman tells ya all about it here.
9. Ken Saucier, the 40-year-old Seattle police union chief who died in a car crash near Post Falls last Wednesday, was remembered in a memorial service. The Seattle Times reports that Saucier fell asleep at the wheel here.
*The Missoulian opines on the sentence handed to a motorist who killed a family of four while rushing half asleep from western Washington to be with an ailing mother in Great Falls, Mont., here.
*The Idaho Statesman sez judges should be held accountable here.
*A sports summit between USA and China that will bring Olympic level talent to the Puget Sound area next year is big news, sez columnist Steve Kelly of the Seattle Times here.
