Out of bounds
Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse’s saber-rattling vows to “fight congressional support” for the full recovery of the last of our imperiled salmon runs crosses a serious line.
After reading your Jan. 18 front page article, I called the Washington, D.C., office of Mr. Newhouse at (202) 225-5816 to tell him I think he is absurd for so staunchly opposing the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative that so many leaders have worked out so many important details on (apparently, he doesn’t like to fish salmon like me).
When I got a “no one is available” response after several tries, I turned to the congressman’s webpage to email him. I was surprised to find that because I reside outside of Mr. Newhouse’s district, he won’t allow me to express my concern about his extreme stance against salmon recovery and dam removal. After looking at his district map to make sense of it, I was further surprised to find that the majority of the dams in question also are located outside of his district.
Maybe if Mr. Newhouse is not willing to hear other voices that his hardline positions impact, he should stick to business inside his own district. I hope Mr. Newhouse finds a topic within his wheelhouse to sharpen his campaign contributions on, because he is clearly out of bounds by trying to dam up progress on this one.
David Moen
Clarkston
Trump contradicts himself
In pursuit of his cockamamie claim of “absolute presidential immunity,” Truthslayer Trump is blatantly contradicting himself. What else is new?
After clearly losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, the Trump campaign filed a boatload of legal cases in various states seeking to have the results overturned, which were all unsuccessful.
In those filings, his lawyers emphasized Donald Trump’s role as “a candidate,” to give him standing to bring suit. Trump lawyer John Eastman told the U.S. Supreme Court his client acted “in his personal capacity as a candidate for reelection to the office of president ... .”
The filings alleged harm was being done to Trump as a political office-seeker, not to Trump in his official capacity as president.
Trump’s subsequent pressure campaign against election officials, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, would become the basis for the federal charges against him.
Lately, Trump has changed his tune, posting on Truth Social that during the time of his “self-coup” he was just a law-abiding president. There’s a joke.
Now Trump is ludicrously asking the court to find he has total immunity for anything he did while president, covering the actions he’s charged with in the federal indictment.
If Trump’s attempts to throw out the results of the election were undertaken as a candidate, as the plethora of 2020 court filings indicate, any presidential immunity, real or imagined, has been defenestrated.
Now this crybaby criminal is threatening the Supreme Court. What a total loser clown.
Mike Epstein
Clarkston
