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Contact Simpson by Shiva Rajbhandari Lewiston Tribune, January 17, 2021

Congressman Mike Simpson should propose legislation to breach the four lower Snake River dams. Idaho’s once renowned chinook, sockeye and steelhead are going extinct due to his complacency. The fish cannot be saved without dam removal. The power the dams generate is meaningless, considering the Pacific Northwest has a 16 percent oversupply of electricity. They could easily be replaced with cheaper clean energy and their continued usage threatens Bonneville Power Administration’s solvency.

Full recovery of our fish could mean more than $500 million in annual economic benefits and 25,000 jobs in this part of the country. This would greatly benefit Lewiston and other Snake River economies.

Furthermore, federal government agreements with the Nez Perce Tribe guarantee the survival of these keystone species.

The port, whose usage has been in decline, is not beneficial to industry. Barging is only slightly cheaper than rail due to government subsidies funded by our tax dollars.

Simpson should propose a solution that moves these subsidies to rail and ensures competitive pricing so that Idaho grain farmers can pay less to access the Columbia River and Pacific markets.

Salmon and steelhead used to paint Idaho’s streams with streaks of red and silver as they returned in the millions to their spawning grounds, bringing with them valuable ocean nutrients. Saving these wild species means saving the entire Snake River ecosystem.

I urge readers to write to Simpson and ask him to save our fish.

Shiva Rajbhandari

Boise

Profile in opportunism

It’s been a week since the insurrection and failed coup. Our Washington 5th Congressional District representative, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, signed up for the ploy to overturn a lawful, certified presidential election. This wasn’t terribly surprising given her unwavering support of President Donald Trump’s incessant lies, misogyny, thinly-veiled calls to violence and racism during the years. As well, she’s questioned the integrity of the November election frequently since then.

Along with 139 of her colleagues and 14 senators, she conspired to overthrow the government through an extralegal process, thereby encouraging Trump devotees to assault the Capitol, potentially kidnapping and/or murdering a lot of our elected officials, including Vice President Mike Pence.

It wasn’t until her own hide was in the sights of the mob that she changed her tune. This Joannie-come-lately about-face does not qualify her for a “red badge of courage.”

It is a profile in opportunism.

This is a sedition conspiracy and fomenting violent insurrection against the Constitution and government she swore an oath to protect and defend. That is unacceptable from any sitting government employee. She, along with all her colleagues, merits expulsion from Congress and an opportunity to face justice before the law.

Paul Franzmann

Walla Walla

Worse than 9/11

Twenty years ago this month, I volunteered and was detailed from Washington, D.C., where I was the Marine Corps faculty member at the National Intelligence University, to be the intelligence officer for the Marine Corps anti-terrorism brigade formed in response to 9/11, where I’d literally observed the actual Pentagon strike that horrendous day.

We sent a heavily reinforced specially outfitted and equipped Marine rifle company to provide security to reopen our embassy in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, for the first time since it closed in January 1989, following the Taliban defeat of their Soviet occupiers.

I sent a hand picked-team of 12 intelligence personnel to coordinate with other national agency assets to enable the challenging protection mission for our handful of diplomats and other Americans there.

At the university, I’d taught an overview course on intelligence support to operations other than war across a gamut from arms control to insurgency to terrorism.

I had several popular guest lecturers, including the most popular, a British Royal Marine infantry lieutenant colonel who gave a three-hour graphic color slide presentation on fighting domestic terrorism in Northern Ireland, where he’d served multiple tours. How, we naive Americans thought, could people that looked like us kill one another in the name of religion or other issues driving politics?

Well, since last week we now know. For me, sadly and ashamedly, last week’s events and since are much more disturbing, frightening, and concerning than 9/11, and time for deep American soul searching.

Dan Button

Clarkston

Hold GOP to account

I am writing to advocate truth and accountability before any reconciliation with the members of the Republican Party who fostered the insurrectionists who tried to undo the results of November’s free and fair election of the Biden-Harris ticket. For the seditionists, Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Josh Hawley (Missouri), I would like to see Senate trials followed by removal from office.

For the members of both chambers who chose to challenge without any basis in law or fact the results of November’s election, I would recommend censure and loss of floor privileges until each demonstrates he has in fact read and understood all of the U.S. Constitution they swore to protect and defend.

I challenge the Republican Party and every registered Republican to return to being the party of Lincoln, which believed in the union and fought a long war to preserve it.

Lincoln’s party ultimately condemned the practice of involuntary servitude and the concept of races of man. Lincoln’s Republican Party believed the legitimate roles of government were more than to provide a strong military and support commerce. ...

Thomas Jefferson strongly believed a nation of yeoman farmers would be able to preserve the delicate union forged after the initial confederation of states failed to provide the continuity and stability needed to promote the common good. ...

Let’s hold the liars responsible for the actions that ensued from their repeated lies. Let them atone for their past irresponsible words and actions by rededicating themselves to serve the common good. ...

Frances Thompson

Moscow

Which type of conservative?

There are now three kinds of conservatives.

There are the ones who actively attack our Constitution and democracy.

Gov. Brad Little, Congressmen Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson, and Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin all signed on to a lawsuit saying Texas had the right to throw out tens of millions of votes in other states.

Fulcher voted to throw out votes even after a Capitol policeman was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher in the attack on Congress.

There is the legislative leadership who reacted to an armed mob breaking into the Idaho Capitol by offering them a chair. Then there are the ones who ignore their oaths to defend the Constitution and remain silent. State Reps. Caroline Troy and Brandon Mitchell are prime examples. Not a peep from them after the biggest assault on the Constitution since the Civil War.

And last, there are the vanishingly rare conservatives who still have some ethics and morality. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden stood up for our democracy.

Time to decide: What kind of conservative are you?

Kurt Obermayr

Winslow, Ariz.

Finally learned her name

A few years ago, I was laying in a hospital bed with a broken hip.

It was a day or two before Christmas when one of the nursing staff asked me if I would like to receive a gift from someone.

I didn’t really need anything but I realized somebody was trying to do something nice, so I said yes.

A young lady, her friend and her mother came by later with a gift.

I was more interested in what prompted her to do such a kind act.

Her mother told me how the young girl was in the hospital a year or two before and someone had done this unselfish act for her. She was paying it forward all on her own.

The family left and I began to weep. What an angel.

I did not get her name until this year when the Lewiston Tribune printed a front-page article about Brianna Nine.

Her gift of kindness was the best gift I have ever received.