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Posts published in “Day: March 10, 2013”

First take: Intimidation

March 10, 2013
news

INTIMIDATION Seems here that it's a crime to threaten or intimidate lawmakers. In any event, a light needs to be trained on this, as the Oregonian's Steve Duin does in his column today: Gun advocates going a little over the line against legislators with whom they have a difference of opinion on gun regulation. Among other examples Duin cites are several aimed just at one lawmakers, Mitch Greenlick, a Portland Democrat. One describes him "as a "disgusting jew parasite." Another features, in two compact paragraphs, three anti-Semitic slurs and five of the seven words George Carlin once claimed you could never say on television. A third warns Greenlick, "You have made a grave error" in sponsoring House Bill 3200, and suggests he withdraw his support: "Good choices are the foundation for long and healthy life.""

Improvements over time

March 10, 2013
idaho RANDY
STAPILUS
 
The Idaho
Column

The Idaho territorial sesquicentennial celebration is now properly underway, with ceremonies involving an Abe Lincoln stand-in and much else, much of it centered around Boise, which was one of the few stable communities then existing in the new territory.

The bash may be widely taken as an honorific to what happened back then. It should be better taken as recognition of how far Idaho has come since 1863 (and yes, I'll say that even with the legislature in session). Celebrations of history have a tendency toward whitewash, and that may be liberally applied this year.

Consider pioneer Sheriff David C. Updyke.

Ada County (then including what are now Canyon and Payette counties as well) was one of Idaho's first, established in December 1864. Boiseans looking for law enforcement quickly chose Updyke, electing him early in 1865 as their first sheriff, to lead that effort. He was an energetic man, open to confrontation and experienced with using his firearms. Just what a barely-settled new county needed. Or so they thought.

Updyke was a native of New York, where got into enough varied trouble as to be strongly advised to take his act elsewhere – far away elsewhere. He moved to California, hearing tales of gold, but too late for the mining rush there, and unhappily settled for work as a stage driver. When he heard about the first strike in the Boise River Valley (in what wasn't yet known as Idaho) he raced there to find his fortune. He found just enough metallic scraps to invest in a couple of new businesses in the start-up town of Boise, but Updyke's thirst for more was still acute. (more…)