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Redden on salmon, and beyond

May 23, 2006

Toward the beginning of U.S. District Judge William Redden's decision Tuesday in American Rivers v. NOAA Fisheries, there was a sentence with a striking word in it.

The sentence was, "This opinion addresses the latest in a series of biological opinions issued by the federal government that have ostensibly attempted to stem the decline of threatened and endangered Columbia and Snake River Basin salmon while preserving tribal fishing rights, and protecting the region's economic and political interest in cheap hydropower, agricultural irrigation, and commercial/recreational fishing."

Did you catch the "ostensibly"?

Redden's decisions over the last few years have built a portrait of the judge as a persistent and accelerating critic of federal environmental policies, and an ally of environmental groups (even if, in this decision, he technically gave American Rivers only a partial win). He can't force congressional policy, and so he remains simply at loggerheads with his critics . . .

Unless, that is, this latest decision upends a key section of the federal-state-Nez Perce Tribe agreement, so carefully worked out over a period of years, in the Snake River Basin Adjudication. (more…)

Election night

May 23, 2006

And so much of it comes down to this. We'll be right here, of course, well through the evening and tracking the results. We'll pass on what we have, and analysis of it . . . but we don't guarantee how far we'll hang in there into the early ones Wednesday morning. (It could be that kind of election.)

Additional places to check for results info start with the Idaho Secretary of State's office, which had a good and often-updated report in the November 2004 election night. Election night posting at the Idaho Statesman has varied in quality over the years, but you'll likely want to check it out this time. The freshest TV election returns usually are those of KTVB-TV (Channel 7).

A growing number of counties are doing real-time on-line returns. Ada County has been running them reliably for a couple of cycles. Canyon County, Kootenai County, Bonneville County, Bannock County, Twin Falls County, Nez Perce County, Bingham County, Bonner County (note that it has a pop-up screen), Madison County (note that it's on a PDF linked to the main page) and Idaho County.

Have fun. And send in your ideas, analysis, thoughts, facts, plaints, whatever, as the night progresses.

Errors in the O?

May 22, 2006

We will be watching to see how the Oregonian responds to the fallout from one of its more striking recent stories - not on politics or even anything very controversial. The story was less broadly significant than the errors in it - if errors they were.

The story was a great read about Mark Provo, a manthematician by inclination (and a sometime teacher professionally) who chucked it all a few years back to live in a motel room at Centralia, Washington, to try to develop a hitherto-elusive proof to a mathematical equation. The story by Tom Hallman was a beauty, a fine read. Problem is that its subject, Provo, says it was riddled with errors, about 30 or so. Which becomes an issue if the reporter involved is a star reporter, a Pulitzer winner, as Hallman is.

The Willamette Week has a piece up about this. Nothing yet in the O. We'll be watching.

Endorsement roundup

May 21, 2006

Just a quick note on the Idaho 1st district race: The endorsements are now in, and may be considered.

We're aware of three newspaper endorsements in District 1. On the Republican side, State Controller Keith Johnson got those in southern Idaho, at the Boise Idaho Statesman and the Nampa Idaho Press-Tribune. Sheila Sorensen got one up north, at the Spokane Spokesman-Review. On the Democratic side, Larry Grant (who is only barely challenged in the primary) got all three.

Creating balance

May 21, 2006

Awhole lot of the premises in our society - the concept of a free market, for one among many - stems from the idea of arms'-length negotiation and agreement: Parties with comparable leverage reaching a deal that works for both. In the real, non-theoretical world, such equation of leverage is relatively uncommon, but we've gotten away from the tools and procedures that could help compensate.

As a boat against the current, then, consider the foster home parents of Washington state. They have had a group organizaton - the Foster Parents Association of Washington State - since 1973. Now they're planning to link with the Washington Federation of State Employees, a labor union, to put a little more muscle behind their efforts.

We'll keep a watch on how this turns out.

Manufacturing outrage

May 20, 2006

Credit University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer with pulling the plug on the latest cycle of insanity-cum-outrage, a cycle spinning fast courtesy of a small group of UO students on one side, and none other than Bill O'Reilly on the other.

Student Insurgent flagStarts with a group of students who for some years have been publishing something called the Student Insurgent, which proclaims, "We are unaffiliated with any partisan organization. We seek to provide a forum for those working towards a society free from oppression based on class, gender, sexual orientation, race, species,and free from the threat of ecological collapse." Sounds predictably far-left-wingy, and it is; it seems to be trying to make a point of being farther out there than anyone else. It is funded in part by student fees and has used campus mailing to get a discounted rate, though it is not a student newspaper (that would be the Daily Emerald).

The editors of the Insurgentdecided in their March edition to provoke some thought (thought? or just yelps?) about the recent battle over cartoons in Europe on the subject of Mohammed and Islam; the cartoons published in Eugene would be cartoons of Jesus. Some of them were graphically sexual in nature, were designed to provoke, and to that extent succeeded. Uproar quickly ensued. (more…)

MSM blogging

May 20, 2006

To read opinion pieces about blogging in newspapers (and see them on the tube), and to read about the MSM (mainstream media, to you dead-tree folks) in many blogs, you'd think a kind of trench warfare between two opposing sides is underway. It isn't true; the lines have long since been breached.

Blogs have from the beginning relied heavily on other media for news and other items (and we reference them regularly). For their part, newspapers have increasingly been using blog-developed information too. And the key bridge between the sides may actually be the growing number of blogs by newspaper writers, under the aegis of those newspapers.

Our immediate hook for this discussion is the launching (okay, it was last month, but we just spotted it) of a blog in the Olympian newspaper by reporter Adam Wilson. But let's take a look at the newspaper politics/public affairs blog scene around the Northwest; there's more here than you might think. (more…)

Up in the mountains

May 19, 2006

Given the location of ski resort complexes, you might expect the sort of thing now bedeviling the Schweitzer Mountain ski area near Sandpoint to be a periodic occurence. And maybe over years to come, it will be.

Areas in the mountain turf near Schweitzer have developed some serious geologic problems, cracks in the mountain and landslides - generated at the moment by sudden spring heat - that have virtually wiped out two condo complexes and apparently have rendered a third a hopeless cause.

The damage apparently did not occur on the ski resort's property, but its managers may have some cause for concern anyway - even if only as a matter of perception. The ski complex, located at a beautiful sites in the mountains above Sandpoint (which is one of Idaho's prettiest city locales), has been a major draw for the region for some time now. Quite a bit hangs in the balance as specialists re-evaluate the mountain.

Others with comparable interests may want to take note of what happens there next.

A dance of the long knives

May 18, 2006

It wasn't boring. If you're in the mood for some offbeat TV drama, and you haven't seen it already, consider this a recommendation to check out the Idaho 1st congressional district Republican debate on streaming video from Idaho Public Television.

For sheer slash and burn, you won't find much better reality TV. Republican politics does not get blunter - in public - than it did here.

It may have been the single most attack-packed major debates in the Northwest in years; not until its last quarter or so did the action let up. There was little subtle here, and few punches withheld, even from unlikely sources. A prospective voter planning to vote Republican but knowing nothing about the race save the content of the debate must be left with a deeply uneasy feeling. Did the debate produce a winner, or a single loser? It's hard to imagine. No one stayed entirely above it all; everyone got burned, to some extent or another. (more…)