Best of the Northwest
If I still wrote Hot Potatoes for the S-R, I'd give a big fat russet to the state Department of Lands and the U.S. Corps of Engineers for withholding public info re: HagaWorld's plans to dredge the Blackwell Island channel. The local bureaucRATs wouldn't provide a conceptual drawing of The Kingfish's plans to convert the island into an upscale big-boat sales, service and slip place. They say it's too preliminary. Earth to Lands/Corps types -- conceptual drawings are part of the public process. Have you already been shaken down by Hagadone's knuckle busters? You guys'd better shape up and play square. You're doing public biz. And this member of the public is watching.
1. David Horsey/P-I takes aim at Dubya and outsourcing here. (Caution: Liberal Content).
2. The Seattle Times provides the full text of that controversial ad by 
U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt claiming U.S. Sen. Patty "Osama Mama" Murray (pictured at what appears to be a religious revival meeting with an -- wink -- unknown fan) is weak on terror as well as the reaction from Murray's camp here.
3. Yippee-yi-yo ... you can find the third edition of the must-read Hauser Times on line, editted by irrepressible Frum Helen Back, here.
4. Jeff Wynn, chief scientist at the U.S. Geologic Survey's Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., pegs the chance of a small Mount St. Helens eruption at 70 percent here.
5. IMHO-NW: The Idaho Statesman (Craig's misusing BSU center), Joe Zellers/Amnesty International (Idaho racial profiling), Joni Balter/Seattle Times (Washington shouldn't expand gaming), Collin Levey/Seattle Times (Women ignoring old Demo pickup lines), and Art Thiel/P-I (Ichiro's routine).
6. Few things are bigger and meaner than a mother grizzly bear. But a train is. A 15-year-old grizzly on a train trestle near Essex (east side of Glacier Park) lost a battle with a train Tuesday night, according to The Daily Inter Lake here.
7. With Mount St. Helens rumbling back to life, the Coeur d'Alene Press visited with Kootenai County residents who remembered the big blast in May 1980 here.
8. WSU Greeks got an earful about hazing from Dave Westol/Theta Chi Fraternity executive director, and Sara Gray/The Daily Evergreen was on the scene to report on it here.
