Bloglander

The first leg of the six-month run has him spending a week in this region. He reaches LaCrosse, Wash., on May 14. The neighboring town of Washtucna lost 22-year-old Blain Ebert to a sniper’s bullet in Baghdad in 2004. After a rest day, he'll continue: 

May 16: Colfax
May 17: Plummer
May 18: Athol
May 19: Sandpoint
May 20: Clark Fork

This region has lost roughly two dozen service members in Iraq. We asked Ehredt for the locations of honor flags for a handful:---

• Spc. Jeffrey Shaver of Spokane, the first Washington National Guardsman killed in combat in nearly a half-century, was the 773rd death in Iraq and his flag will be placed three miles east of Portland, NY, on approximately Sept. 19.

• Spc. Timothy Kiser was a Californian attached to an Idaho National Guard company from the Post Falls and Moscow armories. He was the company’s first casualty when an IED exploded right outside the Humvee he was driving. The 1,580th death, Kiser’s flag will be placed nine miles east of Lisbon, Iowa, on Aug. 12.

• Sgt. Jacob Demand, Palouse, whose death is vividly described as selfless and heroic in the documentary “Bad Voodoo’s War” was the 1,028th soldier killed and his flag will be placed 15 miles west of Roanoke, Indiana, Sept. 2.

• Spc. James Riekena served with the Post Falls armory and came through his Idaho National Guard deployment unscathed. He volunteered for a second deployment and joined a Puerto Rican National Guard unit in Baghdad where he was killed by a car bomb. His flag, No. 3,018, will be placed 75 miles south of Lander, Wyoming on June 10.

People interested helping Mike can sign up to sponsor flags for individual soldiers or donate in general via his website. All proceeds, he says, go to Honoring Our Veterans, a nonprofit based in Jackson Hole, Wyo., that provides retreats for disabled vets from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cross-deputizing back to cross purposes Six weeks after the Idaho Legislature told Benewah County to reach an agreement on unified policing with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, the county has produced a document significantly different than the one everybody thought they agreed to back in early March. The tribe is cross, legislators disappointed.

Medical Lake outraged by Pine Lodge memo When the state announced earlier this month that the only women's prison in Eastern Washington was being shut down, officials cited the overwhelming cuts needed to balance the budget. But an internal memo from the head of the Department of Corrections announcing immediate funds to construct a new women's prison in western Washington is shaking up locals who are losing jobs.

CDA stumped by grisly bear attack Vandals with pruning saws tried to take down Woodrow B. Grizz, a 7-foot bear statue carved from a dead Ponderosa pine, before eventually giving up. Grrr.

Gates Sr. pushes for state income tax on wealthy couples. Hmmm... Listen in as Northwest Public Radio correspondents discuss the elder Gates' call for taxing couples making more than $400,000. Critics see the beginnings of a slippery slope.

A friend who works for A Major News Organization in Salt Lake City sent me an e-mail this morning titled "What's Not To Love About Idaho" featuring Brown's camo-themed campaign poster in his run to unseat Walt Minnick for the 1st District Congressional seat. Check it out here. You gotta love his campaign slogan "Nuke Their Ass, Take Their Gas."

The snarky DC gossip blog, Wonkette, also caught wind of Harley D. Brown today, calling him a cartoon villian. Then Talking Points Memo celebrated Brown as DC needs "Someone Crazy Like Me ..."

So you are just a month away from the primary, Idaho voters. Time to ask yourself, "What can Brown do for me?

KXLY interviewed Ira Tankovich, the man who was convicted of conspiracy to commit disturbing the peace yesterday in the first hate crime trial in North Idaho in years. The trial stemmed from a tense encounter between three Tankovich brothers (the other two were not convicted in court) and a Latino man in Coeur d'Alene last August. Kenneth Requena says their exchange was racially charged and that the brothers called him a "beaner." 

In the jailhouse interview with KXLY, though, Tankovich insisted that he's not a racist. But what about your Aryan Pride tattoos, asked reporter Sally Showman. His response?

"I know its ties and what other people assume it means ... In California it doesn't have that meaning ... I looked itup in the dictionary and it said 'nomadic tribesman' and it applied to mynomadic lifestyle with my wife Connie."

Right, and "Kill Whitey" just refers to a disdain for former Kansas City Royals manager Whitey Herzog.

Tankovich says he intends to get the tattoo removed. "I started regretting this tattoo," he said. "I thought 'Wow, I better get thisremoved.'"

Read the story here. Or check out the video, above.

Ruling clears way for Zehm trial The attorney for Spokane Police Officer Karl Thompson  launched a technical argument in federal court Tuesday that Thompson never "swore to tell the truth" when interviewed by detectives investigating his role in the death of Otto Zehm. The judge didn't go for it and says the trial on use of excessive force in the fatal beating of Zehm begins June 2.

Spring runoff? Maybe a trickle The mild winter means no wild runoff in the Spokane River this year and Avista is already closing the floodgates at Post Falls Dam to start building the summer pool levels in Lake Coeur d'Alene, to cheers of boaters. For those of us who miss the pounding, mighty river in full-throated flood? Next winter quit griping about snow.

Commissioners get final jail sites The bumpy road to building a new county jail moved closer to resolution Tuesday when the final three sites were presented to Spokane County Commissioners. A public hearing is scheduled for May 12 but could change, commissioners warn.

Tonight at 7 pm at the Fox: Patricia Smith Smith is a poetry slam champion, a former Georgia Tech professor, and a National Book Award finalist for her fifth collection of poems, Blood Dazzler, which focuses on the effects of Hurricane Katrina. It's free for students and $20 for everyone else 

Poem snips from Blood Dazzler: 

from "Man on the TV Say":

Go. He say it simple, gray eyes straight on and watered,

he say it in that machine throat they got.  ****

   Pick up y'all black asses and run.

Leave your house with its splinters and pocked roof,

leave the pork chops drifting in grease and onion,

leave the whining dog, your one good watch,

that purple church hat, the mirrors.

Go. Uh-huh. LIke our bodies got wheels and gas.... 

from "The President Flies Over":

***

I don't ever have to come down.

I can stay hooked to heaven,

dictating this blandness.

***

I understand that somewhere it has rained. 

The simple Flash animation (click the pic to go see it) gives each of our ten planets (who's ever heard of Ceres?) a musical tone, then sets them spinning like a solar player piano. Drag the tempo slider to about halfway and listen to Mercury drone in F as it whirs around the planet. Venus, a little further out, provides a kind of quarter note as it passes that horizontal axis. Third in line, Earth throws in an atempo A.

These inner planets create a kind of hypnotic hum that's relieved and punctuated by the more periodic tones of the middle planets. Sometimes it's chaos. Other times, you get a surprising, musical, chromatic line, as they pass side by side.

And it's immensely satisfying, in an admittedly strange way, when Pluto finally makes its long trek around the globe — pinging out a high C before resuming its slow voyage.

Really, really cool. 

Jury doesn't see the hate Only one of the three North Idaho brothers charged with the first hate crime to go to trial in Kootenai County in years was convicted of misdemeanor conspiracy to disturb the peace, as a jury deadlocked on more serious charges Monday. "I won," Ira Tankovich, 48, mouthed to his family in court after the jury read the guilty verdict on the misdemeanor charge, but cleared him of felony conspiring to commit malicious harassment. Jurors could not reach unanimous verdicts on conspiracy charges for his brothers William Tankovich, 49, and Frank Tankovich, 46. The three were accused of making racial threats against a Puerto Rican man last summer.

Two banks robbed Police in Spokane and Spokane Valley were called to apparently unrelated back-to-back bank robberies Monday evening. Spokane Valley police arrested 43-year-old Jesse Adams for first-degree robbery after officers recognized him from the surveillance video of the robbery at Washington Trust Bank at 310 N. Argonne Rd. A news release says money and clothing from the 4:30 pm robbery were recovered. At about 6 pm a man waving a handgun robbed the Chase Bank in the 2200 block of Northwest Boulevard in Spokane. Police say the robber appeared well-versed in bank security measures, demanding specific bundles of money in an apparent attempt to avoid exploding dye packs.

Springing On a day when temperatures boomed into the upper 70s, the Coeur d'Alene Press captured an annual rite Monday, with intrepid young men peeling off shirts and shoes and leaping from Tubbs Hill into the still frigid waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene. They do it, they explained, "Because we're dumb. We're teenage guys still," 19-year-old Michael Cuentas cheerfully explains about plunging into 45-degree, rock-strewn water.

Hot in here? Photographers from Playboy Magazine are in Pullman for a second day today recruiting models for its annual feature, "Girls of the Pac 10." The young women trying out for a spot are almost certainly attracted by Playboy's many fine articles.

Tonight, the Inland Northwest Center for Writers shines.  At 7 pm at the Glover Mansion, 321 W. Eighth Ave., listen to readings by Eastern Washington University faculty, both poetry and prose, by Christopher Howell, Jonathon Johnson, Sam Ligon, Greg Spatz, Rachel Toor and Nance Van Winckel.

Tuesday brings literary flicks and documentaries at the Magic Lantern.  You heard the writers; now see their films. A film with Michelle Pfeiffer and Renee Zellweger, based on Janet Fitch's White Oleander, screens on Tuesday at 5 pm, followed by the Richard Russo-written Twilight (not the one with vampires, but the one with real actors in it: Paul Newman, Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon. $7 for one; $10 for both. And then, at 7:15 pm on Tuesday, also at the M.L., two docs will be shown: Prayer in America and Anna Lappe's What's on Your Plate?

Wednesday night at the Fox, Get Lit concludes with the poetry slam/Katrina/jazz mashup offered by Patricia Smith and local jazzers like Todd DelGiudice, Don Goodwin and Rob Tapper. $20; free for students. 

Jury considers hate charges today A jury will reconvene today in the hate crime trial against three Coeur d'Alene brothers accused of harassing a Latino man and painting a swastika on his car last summer.

Gas attack in north Spokane Firefighters were called to a north Spokane apartment complex Friday night after someone tossed a canister of tear gas inside.

Hoopfest makes it official The 26,656 players at last year's Hoopfest made it the world's largest three-on-three street basketball tournament, as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records recently.

Idaho lawmaker wants opponent tossed State Senator Mike Jorgenson (R-Hayden Lake) has filed a complaint with the Idaho Secretary of State alleging that his opponent in the upcoming election isn't registered in Idaho.

Rossi for Senator? State polls show that Rossi could be competitive against U.S. Senator Patty Murray in this fall's race, but the two-time gubernatorial loser remains mum.

15 years since OKC Hundreds of people gathered at the Oklahoma City National Memorial today to remember the 168 people killed in the bombing of that city's federal building in 1995.