Quotes and Notes

by Inlander Staff


Gambling for Potholes -- "Construction of casinos is outside the Department of Transportation's mission to build and operate transportation facilities."


-- A DOT letter responding to Cheney resident Hal Meili's recent suggestion that the state build casinos and use the gambling profits to pave roads


"The State can build the casinos on credit and hire the personnel to run them... The only job confronting the Department of Transportation would be handling large sums of money..."


-- Meili's reply to the DOT reply


Coercing the Constitution


A Wenatchee chiropractor, Biffer Wellendorf, has sat in a Spokane County jail for more than 45 days for refusing to turn over business records to the IRS. The jailing is a "coercive measure" to make him cooperate, says federal Judge Frem Nielson, according to a Spokesman-Review report.


So this tax protester is behind bars because he won't help the government make its case against him.


If the IRS can't prove its case, it shouldn't be taking people to court. Nor should the court forget that little concept called the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "No person shall... be compelled... to be a witness against himself."





Element of Surprise -- Sunday's New York Times carried a front-page story with detailed information from the highest echelons of the Bush administration about its plans to invade Iraq early next year. Local newspapers and TV stations dutifully relayed the story, but missing from all coverage is a huge point. No, we're not even talking about why Saddam has to go now but George Bush I decided he could stay back in 1991.


We can't help be reminded of earlier this year and in late 2001 and all those Donald Rumsfeld press conferences, when he would practically give nugies to any reporter who asked about specifics of their military plans. Pundits thought he was so macho -- and those dumb-ass reporters, what were they thinking? Don't they know we only reveal the details of our military plans when we're running a PR campaign to drum up support for them?


Then again, who's to say we're not just diverting everyone's attention from our real plan -- an invasion and installation of a puppet regime in France.





Low Blow -- "Rest assured, we're gonna knee 'em in the groin." That's a prominent posting on Tim Eyman's Permanent Offense Web site, talking about labor union attempts to drain the group's resources by requesting signature-gathering kits and then throwing them away.


How to knee 'em? "Fight back now by writing us a check..."